


Away from These Shores

by ever_dimming



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Altered Mental States, Catatonia, Dean dealing with his own trauma, Dissociation, Emotional Recovery, Gen, Hurt!Sam, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapped!Sam, PTSD, PTSD!Dean, Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm, altered!sam, breakdown - Freeform, caretaker!Dean, hurt!Dean, mentions of Castiel, protective!Dean, spell as plot device, though rarely, unresponsiveness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:51:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 49,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9132925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ever_dimming/pseuds/ever_dimming
Summary: SPOILERS:If you've watched 8.01, you're good. This is not really Season-8-related though, it’s pretty standalone.Summary:A simple hunt leaves Sam in an altered state no one seems able to explain – at first. Pulling him out of it proves harder than expected, especially since Dean is already struggling with the effects of his own trauma.This is a semi-AU in which Cas didn't surviveSwan Song,    Bobby wasn’t there for the cemetery showdown, and both he and Ellen are still around. Sam escaped the Cage with his soul intact, but not without a price.Warnings:Language, occasional graphic reference to the torture Sam endured in The Cage; kidnapping (though not central). I may add individual warnings to future chapters.Triggers:While this fic has no sexual content, and mainly keeps to show-level violence, it deals in part with loss of power and with severe lack of autonomy, which can still be triggering to some. Also, Sam is extremely dissociated for a lot of this. If you are a trauma survivor – especially if you're dissociative – please take this into consideration.ETA: Occasional self-injury in later chapters. There will be warnings.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Supernatural, its characters, plot lines etc. belong to their awesome creators. I am merely suggesting fun new ways in which those beloved characters could suffer and/or be comforted.

The door gives way easily enough, raining splinters on Dean as he hurls himself into the cabin. His shoulder throbs angrily and the blood in his eyes stings, but he holds the gun steady, steady.

It’s quiet inside, enough that he can hear his own breath stutter at what he sees.

"Sam?"

His brother is tied to a chair, and Dean doesn't waste time waiting for a response before sliding down to his knees to work on the rope.

He does look up at Sam, though, because he hasn't said anything yet.

Sam's face is blank, his eyes unfocused. His mouth is open and his head has fallen back, like everything about him that was tense and present is gone. He doesn't seem to know that Dean is even there; he hasn't so much as flinched since the door broke, Dean suddenly realizes. Hasn't made a sound or even tried to move.

Something's definitely not right.

He pulls the rope off his brother's wrists, which are remarkably free of wounds or scuff marks. The image of Sam sitting there placidly while being restrained makes Dean so uneasy he needs a moment to fight off a wave of inexplicable rage.

He stands up, ignoring his aching ribs (the witch fought hard, and it didn’t help that he was dead tired going in) and stares at his now-free, still motionless brother.

Sam's gaze seems to linger on something across the room, up by the ceiling. Dean can't see anything there but cobwebs. He gently slides a hand under Sam's neck to support his head as he dips his chin, moving his brother’s face down a bit to get in in his direct line of vision. Glassy hazel eyes stare right through him, pupils dilated. _No no no no no._

"Sam?"

No movement, no response. Not even a blink. It's like there's no one home.

Dean's stomach clenches sickly. "Sammy, hey. SAM! What happened? Why - - why are you so zoned out, man?"

Sam just sits there, slack-jawed, his gaze empty. His arms hang limply at his sides, dead tree branches.

It’s a kind of fear that has nothing to do with the feeling Dean sometimes gets when he thinks _so_ _this is the hunt that kills me_ , not even the kind of terror that still has him struggling to sit up in the middle of the night, gasping and sweat-drenched and choking on Alastair’s name, his eyes dry. This is worse.

He takes a long, shaky breath before he speaks again, because he _cannot_ lose his shit, refuses to lose his shit.

"Hey, let’s - - she's dead, Sammy. The witch is dead. Not like I can grill her for info to find out what the hell she did to you. Please, man, will you just work with me here? C’mon. I know you’re in there."

Sam remains unresponsive, his eyes dull, head falling back as soon as Dean lets go.

“Shit, Sammy. I don’t - - shit. ”

The less-appealing option of tossing the room in hopes of finding clues suddenly feels like the best idea he’s come up with all week, and Dean tears into the interior of the cabin with what he tells himself is an appropriate amount of force, _not rage, efficiency._

He does find what he’s looking for, not five minutes later; apparently stealth wasn’t high on the witch's list of priorities, probably because neither he nor Sam was expected to survive more than a few minutes after his arrival.

Dean actually feels the color drain from his face as he reads the words scribbled on the crumpled piece of paper torn from a _My Recipes_ notepad, the barely-legible Latin bleeding black ink over a background of smiling animated pumpkins and cheery corn cobs.

A willpower binding spell. A fucking willpower binding spell.

The witch had, essentially, nullified Sam's ability to resist. To even think, most likely. Although that might have been a mercy.

Dean’s fingernails dig into the scarred wooden surface of the table as he tries to digest the thought. He looks around, his heart racing, telling himself it’s fine, it’s _fine_. It doesn't look like the woman -- he never did get her name, not that he gives a damn now -- had much time with Sam, or that this was her ultimate goal; more like she found a way to make his brother, giant that he is, pliant and cooperative in order to transport him here. With the spell she would have been able to just tell him to get in the car, to walk into the cabin. Hell, she could have told Sam to stop breathing and he probably would have.

The thought makes Dean sorely regret having ended her so fast.

But he needs to get his brother somewhere safe. That much he knows. He focuses on that to avoid thinking about what it all means. Safe place first, freakout later.

Carrying Sam to the car isn't a viable option with a shoulder that only seems to be getting worse by the minute; he's going to have to to _tell_ him to move, as much as it turns his stomach to basically use the effects of the spell _._ They need to get a motel room and just take it from there -- maybe Bobby will have a lead on a cure. Something. But for now, they need to put some mileage between them and this place. 

Dean takes another deep breath.

"Hey Sam? Hey, I need you to listen to me. Get up."

A few beats, then Sam moves. He stands up slowly, swaying on his feet, empty gaze still fixed on nothing in particular. Dean rests a steadying hand on his back.

"We're going to the car now. You follow me, we get in, and we get the hell out of dodge. Let's go."

He guides his shell-shocked brother through the broken remains of the door and the shattered glass outside, grateful that the witch’s body is mostly hidden by the leaves of the wild-growing garden. Sam moves as if in a dream, but does as he is told. When they get to the Impala, Dean opens the car door and carefully presses down on his brother's shoulder.  
  
"There you go. Good, now get in. That's it."

He then spends a frustratingly long time rearranging Sam on the seat, because the guy doesn't seem able to sit comfortably, though he tries to follow Dean's instructions. _Christ, it's like he doesn't even feel his own body,_ Dean thinks. _Maybe he doesn't._

He avoids Sam’s eyes as he bends his legs to lean his knees against the car door, places his lax arms by his sides, covers him with a jacket just to be sure he's not cold. Sam doesn't seem to notice any of that; he stares blankly past him and into the middle distance the entire time. The spell seems to have taken control of more than just his mind; his body seems to have slowed down its rhythms as well. He takes only shallow breaths, and when Dean feels for his pulse it's alarmingly slow.  
  
_Shit_.

Sam remains silent for the duration of the drive, leaving Dean to talk his ear off and try to get a read on just how fucked they are. Which, apparently, royally. Seems like Sam can follow simple requests (Dean refuses to think of them as _orders_ ), but it doesn’t take long for it to become clear that anything requiring independent thought has been temporarily shut down and locked away. When Dean desperately tells him "say something", Sam dully echoes, "something." That is the only word he utters, and Dean is pretty sure he has no idea what it even means, that he is just parroting back what he was told to say.

It's like a bad joke.

Two hours into the drive, it gets so much worse when it occurs to Dean that the witch wouldn't have felt the need to tie Sam up unless she was expecting her spell to wear off, and soon. The realization makes him break out in a cold sweat. He pulls over on the side of the road, takes Sam's face in his hands again and turns it to him. Vacant eyes stare back at his frantic ones, unseeing.

"Sammy, you still in there? Are you - - is this some kind of -- ah, shit. I don't know". He has experience dealing with physical shock, sure, but this doesn't seem to be it; and if Sam is stuck in this state because something in that spell irrecoverably bent his mind, he has zero idea what to do.

They sit there for a while. Eventually Dean gently turns his brother's face back toward the windshield, just because that glassy stare is too unnerving, and takes the car back on the road, teeth clenched.

He wonders if he should pull over the first time he sees a hospital sign, then another, but keeps driving. He doesn't know yet. He doesn't KNOW. This could still be the spell. And he’s reluctant to deposit Sam in a the hands of strangers -- not ready to just trust civilians like that. Not yet.

 

When they pull up next to a motel that looks just shy of decent, Dean sits in the parked Impala for a while -- hand splayed on Sam's chest, because he can't concentrate unless he's sure his brother is still breathing -- and considers his next move. He could close Sam's eyes so that it looks like he's napping in the passenger seat, and go in alone. It would be easier than marching him in and having him stand there like the world's largest living mannequin while he pays for the room, that's for sure. But he can't take the thought of leaving Sam alone like that -- not when he's so damn vulnerable, not to mention scarily suggestible -- and something about the plan feels dangerous in another way, too; like closing Sam's eyes might allow a slide into complete unconsciousness. _No. Screw that._

The motel office is painfully bright and overheated as Dean makes his way in, an obedient Sam in tow. The woman at the desk looks up at them, raising an eyebrow almost imperceptibly when her gaze lands on the taller man, who is not so much walking as lethargically placing one foot in front of the other. Dean tries to whip out his best smile.

"Hey there. We're gonna need one room please, two singles will be fine."

The woman looks at Sam, seems distracted; surveying his brother again, Dean realizes that Sam probably looks drugged or seriously unwell. Not enough to get them in real trouble in a place like this, but it does bug him. That glance. That _what’s wrong with you_ vibe. Nothing is wrong with Sam. Nothing that can’t be fixed, anyway.

He whispers in his brother's ear as the woman tears her eyes away from him long enough to dig for their key. When she turns to them Sam monotonously recites, "thank you."

She looks at him, more curious than suspicious. "No problem," she says. When Sam continues to stare at the wall behind her, she frowns a bit, but says nothing.

Dean takes the key, smiling apologetically.

"My brother's not feeling so good. Still recovering from an accident," he says, unsure as to why he's even making excuses to this stranger. "He has his bad days, you know."

The woman instantly becomes friendly. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I could tell someth- -  anyway, sorry. You boys have a nice stay." She directs her last comment at Sam, enunciating it in a way that makes Dean's face prickle with humiliation for his brother.

"Thanks," he says curtly, and takes Sam's elbow to guide him out. "Let's go. Sammy, walk with me, we're going outside now."

 

In the room, he herds Sam over to the bed farther from the door, sighing when he remains standing next to it like his battery ran out.

"Right."

Frustrated and suddenly so tired he can barely stand, he pulls Sam's jacket off and has him sit down, then lean back. Sam follows his instructions, laying down on the thin mattress and once more staring at nothing in that glassy, unblinking way that makes Dean's skin crawl. It makes him think of vessels and that, in turn, makes him think of Cas, which is never a good thing these days. Cas is blood, sticky and coppery in his mouth, sprayed on his face and his clothes in Stull Cemetery. Cas is wind blowing through the grass, utterly useless but still painful on his broken face as he crouches down where hell gaped open moments ago, staring at the sealed earth in disbelief. SAMMY.

Dean ignores the pain that flares up in still-healing bones at the memory. He talks and talks -- about what, he has no idea -- as he takes off Sam's boots and covers him with a miraculously clean-looking blanket he finds tucked away in the closet. It actually smells like fabric softener, like something you'd find in someone's home, and he wishes Sammy could feel that. _Who's to say that he doesn't?_

Although he knows better, he still rests a hand on his brother's forehead; is still irrationally disappointed when he finds no evidence of a fever. Nothing is eating away at Sam, there's no infection to fight, no pathogen. No internal war taking place. There's just Sam, lying under the thin blanket the way he would under a pile of rocks, silent and blank and watching nothing.

He takes his cell to the tiny bathroom to dial Bobby, feeling like an idiot but reluctant to discuss the situation in front of his brother. He isn't sure if Sam truly is as checked out as he appears to be. Hopes he isn't.

Bobby curses on the other side of the line for a full minute. Yes, he's heard of this before, but has no clue how to break the spell when the witch is dead. Dean refuses to panic over that -- if there's an answer, it's somewhere in that dustball of a library in the Singer house -- but it's Bobby's second call, a few hours later, that pulls the rug out from under his denial. He is already starting to feel frayed after staring at Sam's empty face for so long, and the update does nothing to calm his nerves; Bobby tells him what he already knows, but has been struggling not to think about since that stop on the road.

"Dean, according to everything I'm lookin' at, this is a relatively straightforward spell. Creepy as fuck, sure, but easy to undo. The thing is, you shouldn't have to."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Bobby sighs. "These willpower binding spells come in all forms. The one you found in the cabin is pretty low on the scale -- not that powerful a witch, lucky for you boys.” He pauses, either hesitating to go on or -- part of Dean bitterly suggests -- re-assessing the wisdom of defining the Winchesters as lucky.

Bobby goes on, sounding almost apologetic. "The thing is, with the spell being relatively weak, it... has a time limit. Most of them do. And this one is good for an hour or two, maybe three, tops, before it wears off. It's not meant for more; it's usually used to aid in an escape when you're found out, that sort of thing. In this case, the witch was probably using it to--"

"Get Sam to the cabin to use him as bait. Yeah, I figured." Dean pinches the bridge of his nose. _Tell me something new. Please please._

Bobby sighs again."You say you got to him, what, at around noon?"

Dean is suddenly finding that the cramped space lacks air. He gets up, stumbles out of the bathroom and back into his and Sam's area.

"Yeah."

"Well, that was over eight hours ago. Kid, I hate to tell you this, but I don't think we're dealing with the spell anymore."

_There it is._ Dean closes his eyes.

"Then what are you telling me, Bobby? That he -- that something just happened to snap while he was under?" He sits heavily down on the lumpy mattress and looks at Sam, who is still lying motionless on his own bed, eyes glazed, mouth open.

"Bobby, the guy’s completely MIA. No way is this not spell-related. He was fine the day before she grabbed him. Come on!"

Bobby sighs again. "I'm sure he was. Except I've seen this happen. I mean, not exactly this, but hunters being just fine until one day they're not -- that ain't exactly a rare thing. Listen, your brother's been through possession, and he's been through a hell of a lot worse in the cage. We don't know what being taken over like that might do. Maybe he had some sort of… reaction, like the mother of all flashbacks or something. Maybe he couldn't come back to himself once the spell wore off. It's all possible."

Dean scrubs a hand through his hair.

"Then what am I supposed to do? Bobby, I can't just - -  he might be in pain for all we know. Or getting worse."

Bobby clears his throat, still sounds choked up despite his best efforts. "I know, son. I'm worried about that, too, believe me. No one’s givin’ up on him, okay? I'll keep looking for answers."

Dean closes his eyes. Says nothing.

"But for now, you need to get him to Ellen's. And for once in your life, don't argue."

Dean doesn't.

*

Ellen's new place -- she moved two weeks after they cremated Jo -- is only an hour and a half away; but showing up on her doorstep with Sam in his condition means she won't get any sleep tonight. Dean decides to wait until morning, and tells himself that it has nothing to do with his resentment of the idea that anyone they know see Sammy like this, not to mention take over caring for him. He does feel like shit about the plan, knows Sam would be mortified at the thought of being a burden to Ellen. But he also can't drag his unresponsive brother around like this. He doesn't know if Sam is taking anything in at all, but if he is, he doesn't need to be staring up at a strange motel room ceiling, or be crammed into the passenger seat of the Impala for hours on end, unable to tell anyone if he's hungry, if he needs to stretch his legs, if he's in pain or discomfort.

Dean turns his attention to the issue of keeping his brother fed and hydrated. Nothing much in their bags, and he doubts there’s even pizza delivery anywhere near the motel since it’s in the middle of freakin’ nowhere, but they do have some packed leftovers of the closest thing to pie Dean could track down on their last grocery run -- he's pretty sure it's full enough of preservatives to last until they bring on the next apocalypse, so at least it hasn't gone bad -- and he figures it will just have to do. If his math is correct, Sam hasn't eaten in over 24 hours, and he's already weak.  They can feed him his rabbit food when they get to Ellen's, if there is any to be found there.

Telling Sam what to do and watching him dully obey, rather than bitch and moan and argue, creeps Dean out to no end; so he goes for the alternative. He sits his brother down by the chipped, Formica-covered table in the kitchenette and brings a fork to his mouth. This he has practice with.

Part of him hopes -- is illogically convinced -- that Sam will pull back from the offering, maybe even reward him with one of his patented "the hell, Dean?" looks. He deflates when all his brother does is stare, just as before, pupils wide and dark, gaze unfocused.

Dean knows he has to tell him to eat, but he can't. He just can't. Faced with Sam's empty stare, he wonders if his brother thinks he's in the cage. Maybe this is all that remained after a while, the only resistance he could offer -- to not be. To leave his body behind to do whatever it was told, and... hide. Sleep.

Dean remembers how badly he missed sleep in hell. The things he had to endure fully conscious. There are grey patches in his memory marking the few times when he managed to burrow down deep inside himself and disappear, leave his ruined form behind. Though Alastair always did find him. He suspects -- he _knows_ \-- that Alastair's creativity pales in comparison to Lucifer's, and that is a notion he needs to shove out of his mind, urgently, violently.

He puts the fork down, takes Sam's hand. Presses a thumb against the inside of his brother’s palm, where the old scar is.

"Sammy, listen to me. You're okay. You're with me. You got out a long time ago, remember? You're never going back. SAMMY."

He presses the back of his hand to Sam's forehead, to his cheek, the way their mother used to do, though Sam wouldn't remember. "Come back. Talk to me, Sammy, please. You can, you know. Give it a try."

Sam doesn't move, the slow pace of his breathing doesn't change. He doesn't curl his fingers around Dean's or make a sound; his expression remains blank.

But his pupils constrict. There's no missing it.

Dean's heart leaps so hard in his chest he gets lightheaded. He isn't sure what this means, beyond the fact that Sam's eyes might be focusing. But he’ll take any sign of awareness right now. If Sam is watching a shelf across the room, that's a fucking WIN.

He squeezes his brother's hand, brings the fork up again, this time carefully touches the piece of pie to Sam's lips for a second.

“Just pie, Sammy. It's safe to eat. You can have some if you want to."

For a long moment, nothing happens. Sam just stares ahead, eyes glazed, seemingly unaware of the fork hovering near his mouth.

Then he takes a hesitant bite. And chews, slow and dreamlike, as if he can't exactly remember what it is he's doing.

  
"Good, Sammy. See? You can do this. Keep going." Dean doesn't dare let go of Sam's hand, so he can't wipe at his own eyes like he desperately needs to. "You ready for some more?"

*  
  
  
**_Next chapter:_**

**_Ellen walks over to the Impala's passenger side, bends down to look at Sam through the open window. Dean sees her shoulders tense up before she speaks, softly._ **

**_"Hey there. You planning on getting out and sayin’ hi to me like a decent person?"_ **

**_Sam doesn't seem to hear her._ **


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So, I know you're supposed to post chapters a few days apart so that people won't be deterred by the low number of views or something to that effect, but the main reason I'm posting this is that I am in a bad way, and I feel like it's better to get everything online when I have the energy. The story isn't finished yet, but it's pretty far along. So here you go.**
> 
> **See previous chapter for warnings, disclaimers etc.**

When they pull up next to Ellen's place, she’s outside waiting for them. Goddamn Bobby; Dean is filled with gratitude. He isn't sure he has it in him to repeat the whole story.

"Finally! Get over here, you ass. Why didn't you call me right away?" Ellen wraps her arms around him, squeezing tight, but it's her hand on the back of his head that nearly does him in. There's nowhere safe, and their mother is dead. This is NOW, he reminds himself.

He thinks of Jo, of those two horrible days before Ellen found out for sure what had happened, that she was gone. He pulls away.

"Sorry I had you worried. We - -  I should have called last night. Did you sleep?"

Ellen watches the Impala behind him, already distracted.

"Yeah. No. How is he? Any change?"

Dean looks down at his boots. There are dried specks of dark blood near the sole; maybe human, maybe not. Despite what you'd think, most creatures bleed the same. "He's still not speaking, not making eye contact. But last night it seemed like he... like he was looking at something. And he ate - - I mean I fed him, but-"

It sounds so pathetic now that he's said it out loud, denial at its worst.

"It's a start," he adds, and is instantly filled with self-loathing so palpable he nearly gags on it. _Will you just shut the fuck up, Winchester_ ** _._ **

Ellen walks over to the Impala's passenger side, bends down to look at Sam through the open window. Dean sees her shoulders tense before she speaks, softly.

"Hey there. You planning on getting out and sayin’ hi to me like a decent person?"

Sam doesn't seem to hear her. His head is slumped to the side and his face remains blank, dull eyes staring at nothing in particular. If there was any sign of awareness last night, it's gone now; he appears as hollow as he was in the cabin. The silence that follows Ellen's question seems to last forever.

“Sam,” she says, then stops.

Dean has no reassurances to offer, to Ellen or to himself. He just stands there in the sun, his head aching and his hands empty, suddenly as mute as his brother.

Ellen studies Sam's face for another moment, then reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. Her voice has the same alarming quality as Bobby's on that second call.

"Let's get you inside."

Sam follows Dean once prompted, getting up the steps slowly. They've only been to Ellen's current home once, a fact for which she never fails to scold them whenever one of them calls for advice. Sam took the few stairs in one or two jumps then -- not really a challenge when you're a giraffe, as Dean was quick to point out, but still. The younger Winchester was excited to see Ellen's library, a fact which also provided Dean with material for his _Nerds Will Be Nerds_ routine as he headed straight for the fridge in search of beer. Ellen nearly slapped him upside the head for his bad manners, telling him he wasn't at Bobby's and to “keep his goddamn hands to himself for one goddamn minute.”

It hurts to watch Sam now, as he obediently shuffles into the house, oblivious to Ellen's hand on his back guiding him past the living room -- past all those bookshelves -- towards the kitchen table.

"Hey."

Ellen's voice is sharp, and Dean blinks. He realizes he's wandered over to the old fridge, is leaning heavily against its scratched surface.

"You doin' okay?"

He nods, suddenly embarrassed. "Yeah, it’s, I’m just - - "

His head is throbbing, and the last 24 hours seem to be catching up with him since the moment he got out of the car. He squints uneasily and stands up straight. "Just tired, is all. 'm fine."

Ellen shakes her head, keeping her eyes on him as she herds Sam towards a chair.

"A-ha. Well, I'll get some food into you in a minute, and then you're gonna go lie down for a while, because you look like week-old roadkill. But I’m sure you’re fine. Hang on, okay?"

Dean nods, wordless again. He watches Sam’s face as his brother lowers himself into the chair at Ellen’s prompting. Sam's gaze seems so far away and lost that something in Dean’s chest tightens painfully, so hard he can feel muscle coil around bruised ribs. He swallows, blinks hard.

The feeling of being lost is a memory that’s all too easily accessible; the bitter, ashy taste always on his tongue in purgatory (he later thought it might have been hunger or adrenaline or both, though he doesn't recall ever actually _missing_ food there). The drums of panic beating behind his eyes, loud and wholly independent of his heartbeat, separate from the high-pitched note of blood singing in his ears. He wonders if Sam is feeling the same things, and finds himself hoping that he is, because the thought of the calm surface of his brother's expressionless face hiding nothing and no one is beyond what he is able to comprehend.

"There. Good, Sam. Thank you." Ellen gently squeezes Sam's knee as he leans back in the chair and lets his hands drop to his sides, and Dean knows exactly what she is doing; he remembers a documentary he and Sam half-watched one night in a motel room while they were cleaning their guns, something about the way longtime POW’s are sometimes treated on their first days back -- every willful action addressed to re-teach a battered body and an abused mind the concept of choice.

He shudders.

The phone rings, but Ellen ignores it. "Has he been eating? Drinking?"

Dean frowns.

"What? 'Course."

"I mean, has he initiated that? You said 'I fed him.' I know he eats when he's told, but - - "

Dean watches the ground intently.

"He ate and drank some when I told him that he could. But I had to get the fork up to his mouth, and the cup, too, otherwise he wouldn't budge. I don't think he remembers."

Ellen frowns. "Remembers what?"

"That he can do that stuff. And that he... I don't know, that he’s here. He doesn't really LOOK at things, except for a couple minutes last night, and even then, he wouldn't look at me. I think he was staring at something across the room. I don’t know where he is in his head."

Ellen nods. "What'd he eat?"

Dean chews on his lip before he answers, sounding so unexpectedly young and apologetic she is taken aback.

"Some - - some pie."

She studies his face, thinks about Dean’s years of feeding his kid brother cereal in motel rooms, about John's long hunts and late mornings after Mary.

"Long as he kept it down, we're good. I can cook something more nutritious today, and we'll see how it goes." She hesitates.

"And... the rest? I mean, uh - - hygiene?"

Dean sighs.

"He can take care of pretty much everything if you talk him through it. I yelled instructions from outside the bathroom."

"You - -  what?"

He snorts. "Not going in there with him."

Ellen smiles in spite of herself. "Okay. Not gonna push you on that one."

The phone rings again. Dean gestures towards Sam. "I got him. You better take the call, might be important."

It's Bobby, with zero good news. Most spells do end when the person who casts them dies, which of course she knew; either way, by all accounts, Sam should be fine by now. So no answers, just more evidence to suggest that they're in over their heads.

When she hangs up and gets back to the kitchen, Dean is seated next to Sam, talking to him quietly. She hears "promise" and “please”, spoken with a softness that isn't meant for her ears, and she has to unclench her fists before she opens her mouth to speak. “So -- “

Dean turns to look at her, his face so tired and pale and his eyes so haunted that saying what she has to say hurts even more.

"Bobby doesn't know what's causing this. He's tried everything, but he's out of ideas."

Dean nods. He says nothing, just places his hand on the top of his brother's head, watches unfocused eyes staring into the middle distance. Ellen wants to cry for the Winchesters, but that would not be appreciated. She suspects it would drive Dean right out the door, dragging Sam along with him.

So, instead, she pulls up a chair and says nothing, her thoughts drifting. Neither of John’s boys ever knew what to do with themselves when faced with her attempts to take care of them -- especially Dean, maybe because he actually remembers Mary, keeps that space in his heart sealed. Sam has always been more open, painfully so, the way children missing a parent they never knew sometimes are without realizing it.

But need doesn’t mean familiarity; the look in his eyes whenever she wrapped her arms around him, or insisted that he take some food on his way out, was always one of blank surprise. Like being casually cared for wasn’t something he could process. Even when John was alive -- especially when John was alive, though she did love the man -- there was no one to teach him that except his brother. Dean didn't even have that much once Mary was gone, and he never betrays any sign of anger at that particular injustice. But she does know with chilling certainty that he can’t survive without his brother -- she would never tell Sam about what happened when he left for Stanford, and Dean would swallow his own tongue before ever letting on how thoroughly destroyed he truly was back then. Certainly not after what they’ve been through in recent years. The younger Winchester’s attempt to run was useless anyway, forgiven anyway.

Sam’s empty eyes across the table are impossible to look at when she thinks about that.

  
"Sweetie," she says, careful not to step too close and break the brothers' personal bubble, not while Dean is trying to come to grips with the absence of Sam, "how about you take a shower and maybe rest for a bit? I'm here, and you know you can trust me to watch him. I won't even turn my back while I make coffee, okay? I’ll watch him like a hawk. You just go."

Dean begins to shake his head _no,_ sees the look on her face, hesitates.

“Go, Dean,” she says, leaving no room for argument.

Miraculously, he gets up.

“I’m just gonna wash up real quick and come back,” he says, as much for Sam’s benefit as for hers. “Give me five minutes.”

She knows he’ll make it in three. “You go do that.”

Dean squeezes his brother’s shoulder before he leaves the room.

“Be right back, Sammy. Better not talk Ellen’s ear off while I’m gone.”

He doesn’t look back as he makes his way to the bathroom, and she knows it’s because he won’t be able to keep moving if he does. His shoulders are stiff as he disappears down the hallway. A few moments later she hears the shower running.

Sam’s breathing suddenly hitches; Ellen wonders if he knows Dean isn’t there. _Probably wishful thinking_. The vacant stare doesn’t change as she talks to him softly, sits down next to him to brush an errant strand of hair away from his eyes. “He’ll be back in a minute, okay? I’m here with you. Sam? It’s -- it’s Ellen, honey. I’m here.”

She isn’t sure what makes her reach over and take his wrist to feel his pulse, maybe just instinct, but she does.

His heart is racing.

She opens her mouth to call for Dean, but somehow she doesn’t; instead she just holds Sam’s hand in hers, gently squeezing to remind him that she’s there. _See, we’re okay, we’re good._

Sam blinks, then blinks again, tilting his head a little. He doesn’t make eye contact, staring at the sink instead. His eyes roll slowly up and down, like he’s fighting sleep. _Something is pulling him under._

Ellen hates the way her voice shakes. “Sam, can you hear me? Hey.”

Sam doesn’t turn his gaze to her or give any indication that her voice is registering at all. His eyes drift across the kitchen, like he’s trying to assess where he is but can’t quite process what he’s seeing.

“Sam,” she says more forcefully, taking his face in her hands. “Sam, try to focus. You can hear me, right? You’re at my house with Dean. Come on, now. Look at me.”

Another long, slow blink.

“Sam, look at me. I’m right here.” She presses her palm against his cheek.“Do you know where you are? Come on, sweetie. You can do this. Talk to me.”

Sam’s eyes don’t meet hers, but he sags in his chair, his face impossibly pale and small despite his size. He moves his head from side to side in what she thinks might be an attempt at saying _no no no,_ and his eyes seem different now, not so much empty as - -

It suddenly occurs to her that she and Dean and Bobby have all been wrong.

Sam isn’t lost. He’s been hiding.

He hasn’t been fighting to come back, hasn’t been struggling for a way out of whatever mental wasteland they assumed he’s stranded in; Sam is running for his life. That is fear she recognizes on his exhausted face, nothing other than pure terror, buried deep and clawing its way up the more they push against his surface.

Sam twitches as she shakily, hurriedly says, “it’s okay. It’s okay, you don’t have to talk. I’m sorry. Shhh, okay.”

She watches the color slowly return to his face as she lets go of his hand, and for some reason she thinks of Jo. Not that she ever needed a reason.

*

“I think consciousness is a threat to him,” she tells Dean after he rushes in and sees -- though she suspects he had already felt -- the change in his brother. It doesn’t last long; Sam appears to recede back into himself less than a minute later, once again vacant and unresponsive as they sit by him, Dean’s hand on his knee. “See? His pulse is down. He was sweating, too, and now he isn’t. He’s not in distress.”

Dean looks right at her, which he hasn’t done since entering the house. His bloodshot eyes look like they must burn.

“Why would he - - “

He stops himself, turns back to look at his brother.

“Sam?”

  
  
*  
  
**Next chapter: Sam's POV. I'll be moving between his and the others' after this.**

**_A voice in his ear now, in his head. It feels like it's emanating from his own cells, echoing through him the way wind tears through a dark, empty tunnel. He is hollow, his lights are out; were there lights to begin with? It feels like he was always this, waiting. Empty._ **

**_He listens._ **

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I'll be shifting between POV's from here. As always, see chapter 1 for disclaimer, warnings etc.  
> **   
> 

 

*******

He isn't sure when it started.

He was hunting -- wasn't that what he was doing? Was he deer hunting? But something about the idea feels wrong, and not just because it brings up a face he can't seem to recognize but still burns, still makes his eyes water (if he had eyes. He doesn't have eyes; there isn't a body here. First lesson learned, Samuel, none of it is yours to keep, all mine), it brings up an old memory of the smell of earth and gunpowder and the building pressure in his head _I can't shoot it, don't make me shoot it, dad, please_ \- -

He wasn't hunting deer.

A person.

He was hunting a person. Impossible, but somehow true. Blurry images of crouching under a windowsill, of watching a house from the other side of a street late at night.

She got him in broad daylight, though. Walked up to him in a parking lot, vomiting the words like blood _mentem tuam ac voluntatem_ \- - and he knew them, he recognized them. But it was too late.

The spell wrapped itself around him like an iron chain and the world slowed down to a crawl, draining of color; there had been people in the parking lot, but they were all gone now, perhaps pulled under by the ground having turned to liquid below his feet he was sinking fast help help - -

He felt his mind spiraling into nothingness, knew he needed to fight it, forgot why.

A voice in his ear now, in his head. It feels like it's emanating from his own cells, echoing through him the way wind tears through a dark, empty tunnel. He is hollow, his lights are out; were there lights to begin with? It feels like he was always this, waiting. Empty.

He listens.

The next thing he’s conscious for is a hand on his cheek. They aren't in the parking lot anymore. He is seated in a car -- not the rental or the Impala (Dean. Dean) -- and the sun is in his eyes, but he can't look away. The asphalt is moving, and part of him that's still awake tries to make sense of that. _It's not the road, it's the car. We're moving. We're going somewhere. Dean - -_  

But it's not Dean seated next to him, and the hand that leaves his cheek is too cold and alien to be his brother's. Dean rarely tolerates touch since hell, except when one of them is hurt, and then his hands are frantic and dry and warm, pressing a wadded up jacket against an open wound or slapping him back into the kind of coherence that's never welcome.

No, it's not Dean, not Dean's hand. But he can't find it within himself to turn his head and look. His eyes are on the road, there's a growing hum in his head that tells him it doesn't matter, and he somehow knows it's true. Nothing does.

He's standing in front of an old, wooden chair the next time he becomes aware again. He's inside a house -- a cabin -- and her hand is now on his shoulder. There's talk behind him again, and his body doesn't wait for him to make sense of the words, taking him two steps forward and down, and he is seated in the chair before he knows it, arms hanging limply at his sides.

From where she stands she tells him to look up, and it's then he realizes what's happening, who she is, who he is. For a short, blinding moment there's nothing but panic, roaring in his ears and turning his stomach, because he REMEMBERS.

But then she speaks again, and her voice snuffs out his sense of urgency as quickly and completely as the sight of her made it flare up. The world goes flat.

"You know, it's a shame, really. You two should have minded your own business. I don't appreciate having to resort to this, but I'm sure you understand."

There's dust floating in the air just to her left, caught in a beam of sunlight, and his eyes lock on it like it has some meaning he's forgotten. He was trying to do something, wasn't he? Is there somewhere he needs to be?

"I thought about just breaking your neck when I spotted you again last night, you know. Maybe leaving you for your hunting partner to find. That's before I knew you were brothers."

She leans into the golden light, making sure he can see her. The dust swirls angrily around her pale blond hair, settles on it, and the words **_Jess_ ** and **_ashes_ ** float to the forefront of his mind and then dissolve before he can wonder what they mean.

"I did a little research, Sam." She smiles, and it's almost enough to make the panic resurface. "You two are kind of a big deal, aren't you? So you know I can't let you go. Not when I'm on your radar. Too bad, really." She tsks disapprovingly.

"So, we're going to wait for your brother to show up. And then you're going to kill him for me. And it will feel like stepping on a bug, don't you worry about that. I'm going to take care of any leftovers of that pesky sibling loyalty in just a moment."

Her voice becomes harsher, uglier, though her face doesn't change. He can't look away, trapped in those icy, unblinking eyes. "Not sure whether I'm going to have you eat a bullet once you're done, or just tell you to sit quietly and then end you myself, but one way or another, it will all be over for you both by tonight. So I suggest you come to terms with it if you can. Now - - "

He is dimly aware of her moving forward, crouching down behind him to tie his wrists together. His heart is jackhammering in his chest, but he doesn't know how to move. His body isn't his anymore.

It's no more than a few seconds of lucidity, but that is all it takes. Old doors move on their rusted hinges, opening rooms in his mind that he hasn't needed since the Cage. He remembers. He has to hide.

The witch is still talking, now miles away, the echo of her voice growing faint as he slides through increasingly dark corridors, letting razor wire gates close the path behind him. He keeps sliding and more doors open at the ends of more darkened hallways. They're all familiar. _Welcome home, Sam._

The maze is endless and he grows tired, is tempted to give in and remain floating where he is. But she might still get to him here.

A beam of light lets him know he was right to worry; he's been found out. The body sitting in the chair is being talked to, shaken, cold eyes are staring into its pupils, searching for answers. For his escape route. The trace of an echo rolls like thunder; a name that might be his.

He burrows deeper.

*

There is no notion of time where he is. There is no place. He is nowhere, no one. Suspended in a warm, inky ocean, he doesn't miss the world or its light. Hours pass, days, maybe years; no pain can find him. He’s safe.

He sleeps.

When a faint crash disturbs the humming silence, he turns away. _No no no leave me alone please_ \- -  But the sound follows him, the screech of breaking glass and screaming agony, a voice he vaguely knows but refuses to swim towards. Only bad things can come of remembering that voice, and he is tired, he wants to sleep.

He can't sleep. The sounds find him, sink into him like fishhooks into already-wounded flesh, pull him away from safety, away from peace. He is dragged up towards the surface, and if he had a body he would cry. _No rest for you, Samuel._

He resists nonetheless, struggles against the pull and dives deeper, but he hits what feels like solid bedrock. He has run out of safe places to hide.

No.

A new voice, stronger, closer.

"Sammy."

He's back in the corridors that led to his hiding place, watching the razorwire rust and disintegrate into sand and blow away in unrelenting winds. The force that followed him here doesn't care that he's tired, that he's safe, that he's home; it claws at him, drags him out inch by inch.

"- - lly need your help -- try - "

There's too much light near the surface, too much noise and he struggles to escape but no _no_ _you can't hide didn't I tell you there was no hiding I can find you anywhere_ \- -

There's something else, too, and it takes him a while to realize what it is. The pile of hollow bone and muscle that was once his is moving again, out where there's light and pain beyond measure. It stands, walks, speaks when instructed to, and he thinks maybe now the voice will leave him alone, content with his abandoned vessel’s obedience.

 

It's quiet for a while, but he can't find his way back to the dark ocean. The doors that once led him there are closed and bolted, and he slides through the maze of corridors in vain, a ghost searching for - -  what was he searching for?

"-ammy - - out -" the voice is back, insistent. Feels like it's always been that, like it's been nagging at him forever. It grows stronger, pained. "-er going back- - "

He gives up; there's no fight left in him. He allows his shattered consciousness to coalesce, lets himself resurface from the murky depth, doesn't resist the pull. Torn away from his remaining shreds of safety, he floats towards a light that's already too bright and painful. _No rest._

The touch of a hand on his face. He has a face. There's a mass of limbs just below his eye line (eyes, he has eyes?) a chest, legs bent at the knees (sitting, a hard surface, a chair), and he realizes this must all belong to him, that he is occupying his body again.

He doesn't want to.

He tries to find his way back to the comfort of sleep, but only gets halfway there before he hits another wall. He's been shut out.

The voice is familiar, and not in the same way the screaming was. It doesn't mean him harm. He lets some words filter in through the fog.

"- back - - if you try -"

There's a strange sensation, a pressure, something he recognizes as his hand sending distress signals. For a millisecond he is transported to a memory, a warehouse, the smell of gunpowder, staring at a worried face in the flickering light, the mouth moving _Sammy hey hey you with me - -_

The world that swims into focus is too bright, too sharp. He is back in the chair, anchored down by the body he can't seem to leave behind. The voice is still talking, and although he can't make sense of the words, they don't seem to have the same effect as the sounds he remembers from before. They don't echo through him, and his body isn't compelled to respond. It just sits there, a broken container.

There's something touching his lips, he smells blueberries. His mind rolls the word around like a curious toy. _Blue-ber-ries. Blueee_. He'd forgotten about colors.

And smells, too. And taste. He suddenly becomes aware of another nagging sensation, not exactly pain, more a lack, a restlessness that has to do with what's hovering near his mouth.

Hungry.

He listens to the words again, recognizing _pie_ and _safe_ and _want_.

His mouth opens and he takes in the food, the body's jaw muscles working on what must be their own volition because he doesn't understand, is confused about the concept of eating. He isn't still alive, is he?

The voice says _good, Sammy. See?_  and he is suddenly flooded with relief, unexpected and joyous, _he's made Dean happy_.

Dean?

Something flickers at the edges of his consciousness, a memory. _Brother._ The word brings with it new pain and new comfort, and is followed by a flood of images, of information. Dean. Dean is here. Dean is asking something of him, and he sounds desperate. He's sitting in a room and the wall is grey with water stains on it and his brother is feeding him blueberry pie and - -

It's too much. One of the doors suddenly, mercifully gives way with a sigh, and he doesn't stop to question it. He rushes in, sliding through gratefully. The noise fades away again, replaced by the familiar, deep, earth-rattling hum. He sinks back into the safety of the yawning darkness.

 

Moving again. He's watching trees go by when he awakens next, his eyes already open and squinting at the light when he lands inside the body he is tethered to. His legs aren't moving -- at least he doesn't think they are -- and he realizes it's the world around him that's in motion again; he is sitting in a car. Not the same one as before. This one he knows; the smell is familiar, and he recognizes a small scratch on the window, near where his breath is fogging up the glass.

Home.

His muscles relax, his head lolls further down, he is leaning heavily on the passenger side door. Dean speaks to him, but he doesn't listen, distracted by the touch of fingers pressing against the pulse at the side of his throat (does this mean his heart is beating?), by hands pulling him upright in the seat and lingering on his forehead. Dean never does this unless he's in trouble. Is he in trouble?

The question follows him like an insistent shadow as he slips under again.

 

He is gone for a long time; he somehow instinctively knows this when he resurfaces next. He's somewhere new, and someone is talking, touching his shoulder. They want something from him. The words don’t register; that doesn’t alarm him, though. None of it is real. The only thing that’s real is the comfort of the inky ocean, the soothing nothingness.

Except now he can’t go back. This body -- his body -- is a mountain of sandbags around him, head lolling back under its own weight, eyes bombarded with all the light. Too much light.

The hand lets go of his shoulder, and for a moment the world falls away with it, but then the voice returns. It’s not Dean, although he somehow knows it’s someone _like_ Dean in some way -- that she means him no harm. Mom. Mom?

Ellen.

The name drops into his consciousness like a brick flung through the car window he is leaning against, raining shards of memory as it lands.

_Ellen._

_Jo’s body wrapped tight in a sheet, so small and broken on the funeral pyre, like she wasn’t the kind of person who would have saved the world. Ellen gasping as the fire starts licking at the edges of the shrouds, the smell of burning cotton and then hair hitting them over the sharp aroma of gasoline, and she’s saying_ ** _baby please please_** _like maybe Jo will hear her and rip off the burning sheet and get up, because how can she stay gone with that anguished voice asking, begging - -  
_

He frantically tries to find the door, fumbling and thrashing and desperate to escape lucidity because it’s all too much and he can’t again, he can’t, he doesn’t remember how. Outside, where Ellen is talking at him, watching him, his eyes only blink lazily at the light. His body hasn’t yet re-learned the art of panic.

The world hums and tilts and darkens, and when it shifts back he realizes he is walking up wooden steps and into a house. There’s a hand touching his back, gently pushing him forward, and he obeys, walking, walking. Stopping. He knows this place. Does he know this place?

Ellen tells him to do something. No, asks. Everything still sticks together, sound and sight and meaning, but there's a gentle touch at his elbow and he recognizes one of the words. _Sit._ He listens again _._ She says, _how about you sit down, sweetie, okay?_

Not an order. A request.

Something short-circuits, he struggles to remember how, which limb he has to bend, where he needs to move in order to sit. Ellen’s hand is warm around his shoulder now, guiding him, and his knee bumps into the chair and muscle memory takes over. He sits heavily down and stares, exhausted. His vision blurs again; focus is hard, and he thinks it must have always been hard, but a faint echo of distress tells him otherwise. Did he use to live outside? He can’t remember, doesn’t want to. He couldn’t have. There’s too much light here, too much noise and flesh-tearing, toothy edges. No.

He just needs to find the door.

But all there is, all he can find, is the grey fog that stretches as far as the eye can see. He’s trapped here, in limbo, and no matter how hard he tries, things are filtering in from - - from out there. Where Ellen is.

Where his brother is.

It **is** Dean’s voice, he is sure of that, talking somewhere in the distance. He is so very tired, but he listens. He has no choice.  
  
***  
  
**_Next chapter:_**

 _ **Something’s wrong. There isn’t enough air, maybe. A living thing is thumping a frantic rhythm against the inside of his ribcage.**_ **Heart** _ **, his mind offers,**_ **heart** _ **.**_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So it's taken a while due to RL drama, but here's the next chapter. See chapter 1 for warnings and disclaimers.**   
>  **WARNING for specific chapter: brief mention of self-injury (used as imagery).**   
> 

Hard. Language is hard. Words don’t make sense, like they're filtering through a waterfall. Things are blurry as he fades back into the world, a familiar face floating somewhere to his right. Not the face he was looking for; his attention shifts again.

He forces himself to listen, sifting through white noise to grab at syllables. But it’s a full sentence that suddenly comes at him, roaring out of the fog like a freight train.

 _Be right back, Sammy_.

His thoughts aren’t cohesive enough to form sentences of his own, so all he thinks, all he knows before he sinks is _Dean Dean no please where_ \- -

Something’s wrong. There isn’t enough air, maybe. A living thing is thumping a frantic rhythm against the inside of his ribcage. _Heart_ , his mind offers, _heart._

Sometimes Lucifer took him apart that way, internal organs first, when he wasn’t being creative.

The panic is all-consuming, hitting him like an earthquake. Somewhere in his head light bulbs are flickering and exploding and it’s raining brittle glass and salt and _no, no, wait_ \- -

He tries to scream, and when he can’t scream he tries to run. There’s a voice trying to get his attention, a touch at his hand. The body’s hand. It isn’t his body, can’t be, its face a slack mask around his terror, its legs unmoving.

Everything is snapping and clawing at him even though all he sees are walls, and a stove, and Ellen. Nothing but set pieces in a play. All as empty as book safes, just a lie. He knows the world is only cardboard and pins and paint, knows that everything disintegrates when touched. If you’re lucky.

Someone asks, _do you know where you are?_

Of course he knows. Where else would he be? He went willingly and took Michael down with him, and he doesn’t want to think about his ( _their_ ) lost brother’s face disintegrating on the way down because he needs to sleep, has to sleep, if he could just sleep for a while before it starts again - -

Ellen is still speaking to him, the words scattered and disjointed, deteriorated Enochian maybe. But he does recognize _Shhh, okay, okay._

And then he’s fading away again, but he doesn’t go far, though he can’t say why. Instead he finds a hiding place just behind his eyes. He keeps them open while he sleeps.

_***_

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Ellen says.

Dean shakes his head. He leans over Sam, taking his face, and thumbs his eyelids gently, turns his head towards the bright light coming from the window. Sam remains pliant, his gaze fixed, his arms and legs gone lax.

Ellen thinks to herself that neither of them can even try to pretend he’s temporarily lost in a daydream. _Sam is_ **_gone_** , she thinks, _and he might never come back. He might make the second time stick._

“His pupils are responding to light.” Dean sounds more angry than exhausted, which she supposes is a good thing. “I don’t get it. He was starting to be… wasn’t he more - - “ he waves his hand vaguely.

She sighs. “Yeah. He was definitely more responsive before. I think he just got spooked. Maybe he needs some time.”

Dean sits down heavily by Sam’s side, eyeing his brother’s impassive face before he looks away.

“Right now he seems about as calm as I’ve ever seen him,” he says, his voice toneless. Giving her his best _I’m Not Angry You’re Angry_ routine.

She frowns. “You know he’s not,” she says, sharply.

Dean’s eyes are hooded, his mouth a thin, tight line as he watches Sam’s head slowly dip down towards his chest.

“All I know is I can’t reach him. He’s my brother and he’s in trouble, and he’s right here, and I can’t - - ” He swallows, goes quiet.

“I know. I know, kiddo.” Ellen watches Dean’s face soften minutely at the sound of the last word, wonders if he knows how visible that particular chink in his armor is. “But you said it yourself, he was completely out of it before, right? And he’s getting more responsive now, he is.”

She tries to sound more reassuring than she feels, finds herself lowering her gaze to Sam’s feet to avoid his blank face.

“Just because he’s going back and forth doesn’t mean he isn’t going to improve,” she adds, as much for herself -- and for Sam -- as for Dean, “you know that.”

Dean seems defeated as he says, “I guess.”

Ellen studies the older Winchester’s hunched frame. “Your shoulder giving you trouble?”

He lifts his head, surprised. “A little, yeah. Banged it up pretty good breaking through a door when I got Sam.”

Ellen shakes her head. “You should have told me about that sooner. I’ll get you some ice and - “

Dean reaches for her as she gets to her feet, though he doesn’t quite touch her.

“Later, okay? Just… just sit for a minute.”

 _He’d rather be in pain than alone,_ she thinks, and nothing in that sentence is news to her, but it still feels like a punch to the gut. Because Dean was never alone when he was with Sam, before.

She sits back down, against her better judgment. “You know it’s a time thing, the more you wait before you ice it - “

“The longer it’ll take to heal. Yeah, I know.” Dean doesn’t seem bothered by the thought, looking out the window at the yard with renewed interest.

“You think maybe taking him outside could help? Get him to look around more, something like that?”

Ellen shrugs. “Sure, why not. But it might not be a good idea right now, when he’s shutting down like this. I was actually going to suggest that we get him to lie down for a bit. Maybe after he rests?”

Dean watches Sam’s eyelids droop as he sits silently in his chair.

“Yeah,” he says, and the anger that clouded his face for a moment is gone.

He gets up slowly -- Ellen can tell he’s trying not to flinch at the pain, the moron -- and casually pats Sam on the back.

“How about you get some sleep, Sammy? C’mon, let’s get you on the sofa.”

She knows he isn’t asking about the guest room because he wants to keep Sam in his eyeline, and she also knows that he feels more comfortable in her living room, where he can see what’s coming. Too many blind spots in this house; she noted that when she bought it, not that she had many choices. You only see part of the road, and the woods are right there. Took her a few months to acclimate, and about a year of sleepless nights. Though, if she’s honest, it’s not like she didn’t have her ghosts keeping her awake.

So she doesn’t offer the guest room, only watches Sam as he rises to his feet obediently and makes his way to the sofa, step by unsure step.

“See?” she says as Dean gently presses on his brother’s shoulder, and Sam sits down and leans back, placing his head on a throw pillow without being asked, “he’s becoming more responsive again. He just - “

“Got spooked, yeah, I get it.” There’s the tiniest hint of a smile in Dean’s voice this time, and she finds herself grinning stupidly with relief. “Okay, okay. I’m done telling you that. But you’re getting that ice right now. No arguments.”

*

Sam moves of his own accord on the third day at Ellen’s. The first fifty-something hours are uneventful, and intolerable for that exact reason. No change; no marked improvement. Sam just… exists. He seems to float between semi-conscious and completely unresponsive, but that’s about it. Dean is pretty sure he hasn’t slept more than two hours straight during that time, catching ten minutes here and there instead, nodding off by Sam’s side and shaking himself awake. He doesn’t _want_ to sleep, anyway, except when Sam recedes further into himself and closes his eyes in what Dean assumes is his version of sleeping now. He doesn’t like to see that.

Ellen makes the bed in the guest room the evening of day two, but doesn’t ask, and he’s grateful.

It’s on the third day, though, that something changes. They’re all sitting in the living room, the TV on because the silence needs drowning out, Dean staring blearily at the screen and Ellen yawning, when Sam stands up.

He sways a bit, reaches over to support his weight and finds Dean’s shoulder. And then he’s walking away, moving like he’s wading through knee-high water or making his way through a dark house, unable to see but determined to get somewhere. He shuffles over to the window and settles there, standing motionlessly, forehead against the cool glass and hair falling over his face.

Dean just sits there, arms in the air because he was going to say something, grab at Sam’s sleeve, but stopped himself. _Don’t break it. Don’t breathe._

He finally meets Ellen’s eyes, speaks as quietly as he can. “What do I do? I don’t wanna - - he’s not - “

Ellen nods, looking as unsure and unsettled as he’s feeling.

And then his instincts make the choice for him, too many years of running towards Sam when he’s in trouble, into the fire instead of out, and he gets up and slowly walks over to stand by the window at his brother’s side.

Sam doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes studying the yard lazily like he’s looking for something, someone.

“Sammy?” Dean hates the way his voice breaks on the second syllable, clears his throat, tries again. _Let him know he’s safe, give him a reason to come back, make him want to come back. Don’t screw this up._

“Sammy, hey.” His palm is sweaty as he rests a careful hand on Sam’s shoulder. A test he can’t be prepared for. _The right words, what are the right words._

“You can hear me, right? I think you can. Sammy, it’s okay to come back. It is.”

Sam’s gaze remains vacant, his expression absent. Just words after all, just sounds that fall flat, useless. There _are_ no right words to pull his brother out of where he’s hiding, if he even knows that he’s hiding. Dean isn't sure language even reaches him.

Desperate, he squeezes Sam’s shoulder, hard. Not enough to hurt, or maybe a little, because _dammit Sammy I can’t do this, why are you doing this - -_

Sam sighs.

The sound is so jarring, so unexpected, that Dean instinctively pulls his hand back the way he would if Sam had screamed. He struggles to remain calm as he says, “yeah, I know. I know. It’s okay, Sam, come on. You can do this.”

Sam shifts, eyes still on a patch of grass outside, his mouth opening slightly. He says nothing, and Dean can somehow feel his hold on consciousness slipping again even before his gaze wanders upwards.

“No, no, come on. Man, don’t - - “

But it's already too late.

Dean wants to break the window, drag his fist through the shattered glass, draw a sigil on the wall that will force his brother back into the world the way it tears angels out of it and throws them away.

Cas once told him that it felt like being picked up by your wings and having your limbs pulled apart, and then you had to collect yourself piece by piece from different corners of the universe and crawl back into being. He made it sound feasible, an unpleasant but necessary task.

Dean doesn’t care that it hurts to remember the angel, doesn’t care that he was going to be careful and not scare Sam away, because he’s already failed, Sam is already gone and it’s all too much.

He pulls his brother away from the window and into a hug. Grief is the one thing that has always been their common ground, even when they weren’t speaking. Even when they couldn’t look each other in the eye because of all the anger and betrayal and disappointment, they were each other’s begrudging comfort.

Except it’s Sam he’s grieving.

His eyes well up, his throat closes. Ellen is quiet behind him.

He lets himself stand there for a while, his face half-buried in Sam’s shoulder, the way his brother would sometimes do when they were little and he’d had a particularly bad dream. Sam always was more easily affectionate than him, not as embarrassed and stiff about needing familial closeness. That doesn’t mean he got it, of course; when they were **really** little he would try to snuggle up to John if he was around, but although their dad tried, even Sam could tell he didn’t have it in him. And Bobby isn’t a big hugger either, not usually, but Sam definitely got everything he could out of the guy, even when he was taller than him and big enough to lift him off the ground.

But Sam isn’t asking for, or offering a hug right now. He doesn’t wrap his arms around Dean or pat him awkwardly on the back, doesn’t react to his brother’s unusual show of emotion. He just stands there, unresisting and mindless, blinking slowly at the sky outside the window.

Dean can’t let go, won’t let go, because this is too much like Cold Oak, so much so that he can almost feel the chill of his brother’s blood-soaked jacket, one hand fisting in Sammy’s shirt to hold him up, up as his head lolls lifelessly against his shoulder, as mute then as he is now and just as unable to hear him scream.

He _has_ to let go, though, for now, and he does.

 

***

 

_**Next chapter:** _

**_The light filters in, needles threading through him. He finds himself in the shower, staring blankly at his hands. There's no blood._ **

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Specific chapter warnings: quick mention of something that can be described as self injurious behavior in this one, so, you know. FYI. Also, more reference to past torture. Plus the usual language.  
> **   
>  **Other warnings and the disclaimer are available in chapter 1.**

***

He wonders where he is, sometimes, when he knows that he exists. When the light doesn’t distract him. He stumbles back into consciousness time after time to find himself seated at a kitchen table, a warm hand wrapped around his wrist, a familiar voice talking to him about eating, _go ahead Sammy it’s okay_.

His mouth is usually full, his jaw working, and the taste (mashed potatoes, cold peas; always cold, this must take him a while) is a late addition, more a faint echo than a real thing. He wonders why he needs to be there when the body seems to manage the task on its own, but he has no say in the matter.

One of those times he listens, even though every fiber of his being still wants to shrink away from the sound. Not to know. It’s Dean’s voice somehow, again, his dead brother from a destroyed world and an impossible life (no, wait, Dean isn’t the one who’s - - is being down here the same as being dead? He wants to believe that it is), and it sounds like he’s trying.

Trying to do what?

 _To bring you back, asshole_ , part of him snaps back at the question, annoyed with his slow grasp. He must have shattered when he fell.

Back. Dean needs him back, but then Dean always needs him back, forever refusing to let him complete his walk off the plank. He’s pulled Dean back from the brink and beyond on more than one occasion, too, but he thinks that he wouldn’t anymore, not now that he knows how badly it hurts.

He can’t rest. Even when the meals are over and the grip on his arm (his heart) loosens, even when he slips back into the fog, exhausted and numb and grateful, it doesn’t last. The light filters in, needles threading through him. He finds himself in the shower, staring blankly at his hands. There is no blood. No mud or viscera or stone when he looks down, miles below him to where his feet are. Just water, pooling around his toes, all ten of them accounted for. Dean’s voice is close but muffled, like he’s farther away. Door; he is alone in Ellen’s bathroom and his clothes are in a pile on the hamper and Dean is talking to him from outside, behind the door.

He does as he is told. _When you’re done with the soap you rinse yourself off, you remember how, right? Then turn the faucet to stop the water, real easy. You’re almost done, man, stay with me._  

Something about the water against his skin keeps him anchored whether he wants to or not. After a couple times or maybe a few years, he can’t tell, his hands find the faucet on their own as soon as he enters the bathroom. He follows Dean’s instructions before they are spoken and then waits, leaning against the tiles, water dripping from his hair down to his uninjured feet, for his brother's voice to catch up. He wants to tell him it’s okay, that he remembers how, but words aren’t real and he wouldn’t know how to speak, anyway. His fingers reach for his throat and it’s all there, his voice box hasn’t been carved out yet today.

But he can’t.

Instead he tries time after time to escape, to find a trap door, maybe a crack in the wall, though it’s hard when nothing around him is real. Once when it’s dark he tries to look for Dean, but all he sees are disconnected patches of color (green. A yard?), and something is cold against his face and he lets go, too exhausted to stay and find out what new instrument of torture it is. He can’t rest. Maybe that’s his punishment.

What did he do?

A vise grip that won’t let him get away, crushing muscle and bone. Hurts. It shouldn’t hurt that much. There’s talking, someone telling him it’s okay, _it’s okay to - -_

He suddenly thinks of Cas, clawing into his brother’s mangled shoulder and pulling him out of hell, and he wonders if Dean screamed, if he knew he was being rescued _because how would you know, how can you tell when searing hands tearing your flesh apart are all you know about the world anymore._

He wants to howl, too, maybe for Cas, but a twisting knife in the ruined part of him that was once his memory tells him Cas won’t be answering, and that added knowledge is too much.

He feels himself crumbling to ashes, swept away, fading into nothingness and the words follow him angry and desperate _no no come on_ \- -

For the first time, he isn’t sure if he wants to go. But as it turns out, he has no say in that, either.

He is gone before he completes the thought, a pebble dropped down an old well.

Darkness and light take turns outside and there’s more eating and his fingers struggling to hold a glass, _that’s it good Sam I told you he could do it, drink sweetie_ and there’s noise, there’s touch: a palm pressed flat against his back, hands on his forehead. He thinks he knows why they don’t burn, but it keeps getting away from him.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed, or why he’s getting increasingly restless. Something he forgot. What did he forget?

Who did he forget?

He doesn’t have a word or a color for the kind of pain that comes when it occurs to him that it’s Dean. That Dean might exist outside, that he might be real.

That he’s alone out there.

***

Dean decides against counting the days the morning after Sam’s short trip to the window. He spends the night watching his brother’s still form -- he and Ellen had to carry Sam to the sofa when he just dropped, like every muscle in his body gave out, like his entire system was shutting down -- and somewhere around half past 5 AM he can’t take it anymore.

He reaches out and shakes Sam’s shoulder gently, desperate to see him conscious, stupidly hopeful. _Don’t expect anything right away,_ Ellen told him before she went to bed, her face lined with the pain she doesn’t think he sees (he wondered if it was her back or Jo, and decided again that it was better not to ask), _baby steps, okay? Sam isn’t going to just wake up and be himself tomorrow._

He knows, of course he knows, and he scowled at Ellen and told her to give him some credit, and then hugged her carefully before she went to her room. He watches Sam’s face now in the early morning light just the same, can’t help himself, can’t _not_ search for awareness when his brother’s eyes slowly blink open.

Sam’s gaze is the ruins of everything he once was, a hollow, empty stare that feels like death. His face is vacant like it’s never been used, and he doesn’t look at Dean, doesn’t look at anything.

The rest of the day is a haze of pain and Wild Turkey, though Dean is pretty sure he went through the motions, and he keeps doing the same the next day, too. He tries not to think as he feeds Sam and guides him through the few actions his brother can still manage to perform even when absent from his own body. Sam doesn’t try to move on his own again as the days go by, doesn’t make a sound, and Dean begins to wonder if that was it. Maybe Sam walking those few steps on his own was his last, failed attempt at coming back. Maybe this is what’s left.

He’s still not counting the days (six) when he leaves his brother with Ellen and walks outside one afternoon, to find a tree far enough from the house. He takes care not to break his knuckles -- he needs his hands to work for Sam’s sake -- and the measured punches aren’t enough. He stares at the blood he's left on the bark, then down at the torn skin on his fingers, and wonders if this is what Sam feels, a nothingness so palpable it’s hard to breathe around it.

He wipes his hand carefully on his shirt as he enters the house (there’ll be no hiding it from Ellen, but coming in bloody is never a good idea), swallows hard a few times before he’s sure he can speak.

“Hey, I’m back. Did - - “

Sam’s head turns. He looks at the doorway where Dean is standing, looks right _at_ him, his face expressionless.

Dean freezes.

Takes a breath.

“Sammy?”

Sam says nothing. His eyes remain fixed on the old screen door, even as Dean moves towards him to put a careful hand on his arm, to speak. To beg. Gone again, if he was ever there.

Ellen sighs. “I think maybe he was just reacting to the sound, honey.”

 _I know,_ he wants to say, _don’t tell me, let me have this._

Instead he just says, “maybe.” He doesn’t look at her -- is too ashamed to look at her, for her to see the useless, naked hope in his eyes, or worse, the anger. Ellen, who took them in, him and the shell of his brother that stumbles from the living room to the kitchen to the bathroom like a ghost, not even lost, because to be lost Sam would have to be looking. No, he can’t be mad at Ellen. She’s right, anyway. It seems increasingly obvious that there's nothing left of his brother other than his body, his old reflexes.

 _But he didn’t turn to look before,_ something in him insists. He thinks of Sam in the motel that first night, of how much effort it took to even remind him he could chew. This is different -- even if Sam doesn’t know what he’s reacting to, he **_is_ ** reacting.

Dean doesn’t tell Ellen that, keeping the thought to himself the way Sam used to guard a piece of lore he couldn’t quite prove had value to their research, but wouldn’t part with until he knew for sure.

Sam doesn’t look at him no matter how hard he tries, watching the doorway dreamily, silent and detached. Thinking about the old days is useless, anyway. Only one of them is on the case now, and it feels like, as far as his brother is concerned, it’s Dean doing the haunting; as incorporeal and unwanted as one of the countless ghosts that wouldn’t move on.

He is so tired of chasing Sam without ever leaving his side.

Ellen’s voice is softer as she says, “maybe a walk around the yard will do him good.” She shoots a quick look towards the kitchen, crinkling her nose. “I mean, dinner should be ready in what, half an hour?”

Dean nods. Neither of them is much of a cook, and he’s pretty sure Ellen isn’t looking forward to his bastardized version of tuna casserole any more than he is, but it’s in there baking; they’ll just have to hope for the best.

He wraps an arm around Sam’s shoulder. “Let’s get you ready for dinner, huh?”

 _Huh, buddy?_ He hates his own words, the forced reassurance. Some days it feels like he’s cheerleading on the deck of the Titanic.

Sam is still looking away from him when he speaks, his voice low and cracked from disuse.

“Out- - outside.”

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I expect Sam's road to be bumpy -- no miraculous recovery here -- but he IS progressing. Sorry it's been taking me so long to update; I must have at least three more chapters already written, but it's so disorganized, and I get stuck piecing it together due to my own internal chaos (trying to stay out of hospital).  
> I took a stab at Dean's (or really Ellen's) type of Hunter's Helper, and since I can't drink, I probably made an ass out of myself with an irrelevant guess. But I think I saw that brand on the show.  
> Anyways, hope this is still worth the read.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I don't know why I suddenly managed to update this fic twice in one week, but being desperate for distractions _may_ have had something to do with it.**   
>  **Disclaimer and warnings in chapter 1, as always.**

*

“Sammy, what - -  what did you say?”

Dean can see Ellen tensing up from the corner of his eye as he leans forward, his attention focused on his brother’s face. Sam shakes his head like he’s trying to clear away double vision.

“Outside,” he repeats, louder this time – too loud, Dean thinks, like he’s communicating over a long distance.

“You wanna go outside?”

The question seems so inanely basic, so casual, but he can’t think of anything else to say that might get Sam to actually respond before he retreats into himself again.

Sam sighs, and it’s almost like the sound he used to make when he got annoyed with Dean for being deliberately obtuse about something. Almost.

“N- no,” he says, his gaze still lingering on the pool of afternoon light that spills on the floorboards through the open door, washing the wood a strange, orange hue. Dean suddenly thinks of the cabin.

“Talk to me,” he pushes, and he knows his voice betrays exactly how desperate he is to get one coherent sentence out of his brother, though he doubts Sam hears it. “What’s outside?”

Sam’s eyes wander, his fingers dig into his thigh as he says, “Dean.”

Ellen’s warning sound is useless; Dean is down on his knees and grabbing Sam’s face with both hands before he even registers it. “I’m here, Sammy. Hey. Look at me, man. Right here.”

Sam blinks.

“Y- you’re...“ he stops, seems to struggle for a moment before his eyes meet Dean’s.

“I don’t. I can’t - - can’t tell if it’s you,” he says, and though the words are probably the most heartbreaking thing Dean has heard in a long time, he’s been here before; he’s giddy with relief. Sam sounds like **Sam** \-- lost and confused and a little worse for wear, sure, but still himself. He’s been thinking in there, under that blank nothingness. He’s been missing something. Someone.

“Sam,” he says again, forcefully, “it’s me. I promise. You can tell the difference, come on.”

“I can?” Sam asks, and then he says, “oh,” and somehow that’s enough to make Dean let go of his face, enough to make him feel like he’s suddenly lost his footing. Because Sam is many things, but easily persuaded has never been one of them. Ellen’s frown suggests she’s thinking the same thing.

There’s no time to dwell on that, though, because Sam’s breath hitches, his eyes filling with tears.

“I - - I left him behind.” The words are muffled like he’s choking on them, and Dean instinctively reaches out to place a hand on his brother’s chest, _like that’ll help. Focus._ “Sam, you’re okay. You’ve just been a little out of it, is all. You didn’t leave, you’re here now, that’s all that matters.”

Sam is mumbling something too quiet to hear, a private conversation with himself that can’t be a comforting one, because Dean recognizes his name and Adam’s and _shit, don’t do this, don’t go under again, Sammy come on - -_

He isn’t surprised to see Sam’s gaze lose its focus, is ready to catch him when he goes limp in his chair. Sam doesn’t close his eyes this time, staring sightlessly up at Dean as he lowers him down to the floor, protecting the back of his head, _okay Sammy, okay._ It doesn’t matter; he isn’t there. An empty vessel again.

“He’ll snap out of it,” Ellen says, and Dean presses his sleeve to the wetness trailing down Sam’s vacant face, wipes it away before he says, “I know.”

He sits next to his brother for a while, wishing he could fade away, too.

*

The days that follow are all the same, with Sam stumbling in and out of awareness, still mostly gone, still dead-eyed and mute. Now that he’s waiting for those rare moments of almost-communication, Dean finds making it through the rest close to impossible. When Sam is something near to himself, he’s always watching Dean like he isn’t sure what he’ll do next. Dean remembers that look; he tries hard not to think about who taught Sam that look. Or about his own teacher. He tells Sam that he’s here, that he’s fine, that he’s safe; Sam nods and remains inconsolable, out of reach.

Ellen doesn’t say a word about the increasingly grim state of her liquor cabinet, just as she remains uncharacteristically silent about Dean’s bruised, scraped hand (the first aid kit makes an appearance on the kitchen table one night, then goes away. He grabs what he needs and neither of them comments on it). Dean knows that won’t last, but can’t bring himself to care.

Nights have always been hard, but he finds himself waiting for dark. It’s a false kind of relief; he still can’t really let go and breathe, not with Sam a few feet away, his sleep too quiet for comfort. But he tries. Some nights Sam does toss and turn like he used to, and Dean’s lungs can expand and the air isn’t pressing down on him, breaking his ribs ( _like_ _dry twigs,_ Alastair would sing-song. He used to snap them with a twist of his finger, something to do while he was preparing his next session. An afterthought). On nights when Sam is dead quiet the memories are worse, but that’s what whiskey is for.

Tonight is a quiet night for Sam, a bad night for him. He’s watching the amber liquid swirl around in one of Ellen’s cloudy glasses when he senses movement behind him and turns around, not drunk yet but already slow on his feet, _this is what you get for letting your guard down and what if they get to Sammy - -_

His brother is sitting on the coffee table in the living room, seemingly unaware that his weight could turn the thing into kindling, frowning at the TV. It’s off, but it seems like the difference is lost on him.

Dean gives his heart a few seconds to abandon its attempt to leap out of his chest before he clears his throat, stepping forward carefully to stand in the kitchen doorway.

“You okay there, Sammy? I thought you were asleep.”

Sam looks up at him like he’s surprised by his mere existence. “Huh?”

A response, albeit a vague one. Not so bad.

“Why are you up? You need… you thirsty?” Dean internally scoffs at himself. _Smooth, mother hen._

Sam shakes his head dreamily. “I’m not…” he trails off, his focus shifting as he struggles to stand up, makes his way over to the kitchen in that unsteady gait he’s acquired since the cabin. He leans against the wall, his eyes wide and dark, staring at Dean like he’s trying to remember something important but can’t quite.

Dean moves uneasily. “What’s up, man? You look like you got something on your mind.”

Sam nods, lingers before he speaks.

“Don’ - - don’t worry,” he slurs, “Dean. Don’t worry, I’m gonna - - ‘s okay. I’m gonna wake up.”

Dean makes it a point to unclench his fist around the glass and keep his voice steady as he says, “Sammy, you’re awake. Trust me on this, okay?” his eyes burn. “You are.”

Sam shakes his head slowly. “Not awake, ‘m not - - it’s not - - not real. I need to, um - “ his face goes blank again, his mouth dropping open, and Dean reaches out to touch his arm.

“Hey, hey, no. Stay with me here. Sam, you’re awake, I swear. This isn’t a dream or a djinn hallucination or some other shit, okay? And you’re not -- – “ he hesitates, reluctant to say the actual word, _don’t take that chance --_ “you’re not down there, either. This is real.”

Sam appears skeptical.

“Yeah?” he says, tracing his fingers absentmindedly along the corner of the kitchen table, his eyes unfocused. _He’s gonna bail,_ Dean thinks. So far Sam has flickered out of awareness each and every time he saw him sway between remaining anchored and disappearing back into his mind. It’s ridiculous to begrudge him that, Dean is well aware, but it’s getting increasingly hard to hold his frustration. _Will you just stay,_ he finds himself thinking, _just this once, try._

It’s only when Sam looks at him and says, “okay,” that he realizes he’s said it out loud.

“What?” 

“Okay,” Sam repeats, blinking hard, a little like he used to do on his first late night hunts. He sighs.

“’s hard. Hurts.”

Dean’s chest tightens. “It hurts to stay awake?”

Sam nods again, says nothing.

“That’s alright. It’ll get easier. You just need to get yourself grounded.” Dean pulls up a chair and places his glass in the sink, ignoring a sudden urge to down the whole bottle.

“You wanna help me make some mac & cheese? I got the box right here. Just add water. Maybe some butter.”

Sam frowns. “Ugh,” he says, then appears confused by his own sentiment.

Dean laughs. “Yeah, not your favorite, I know. But come on, dude, humor me.”

 _He remembers,_ he thinks as Sam nods and slowly reaches for the wooden spoon.

“Maybe tomorrow we can have something **you** like,” Dean says casually, tearing the box open with his teeth because knives seem like an unnecessary risk at the moment. No need to test Sam with possible triggers. “That could be good, right?”

Sam is struggling to keep his eyes open, squinting at the bowl he’s holding, unsure. “Um. What do I - - “

“What would you like us to eat tomorrow? Anything goes.” Dean taps on the countertop to indicate where the bowl should go, and Sam puts it down, narrowly missing the edge, distracted by a new thought.

“Salad. Do I eat salad?”

Dean pushes past the ache in his chest as he says, “yeah, you do. You definitely eat salad.”

“Okay,” Sam confirms, “we’ll have salad. T- tomorrow.”

Dean doesn’t have to look at his brother to know that planning a day ahead of time has him fighting not to fade, the thought of remaining present impossibly daunting.

“You can go back to bed if you’re feeling tired,” he says casually, forcing the words out, because every part of him wants to keep Sam conscious for as long as possible. He doesn’t look up from stirring the gooey paste, _everything alright here_.

Sam sounds relieved as he says, “I’m gonna – yeah, I’m gonna go to sleep.”

He makes his way back to the living room, sits heavily down on the pull-out sofa and stares at the TV again before crawling under the wool blanket. Dean can hear him breathing hard, is almost tempted to go check on him, but he waits, keeps himself busy with the food. _Don’t push._

Sam’s breathing evens out within a minute or two, his hand sliding out from under the safety of the covers as his body relaxes, fingers uncurling. Just asleep. As Dean watches his brother he notices, for the first time, that Sam has one shoe on. _Where was he trying to go?_

Sam shifts, buries his face in the pillow like the low light filtering into the living room hurts.

Dean sits down at the kitchen table and lets himself cry, pan forgotten on the stove.

 

***

 

_**Next chapter:** _

_**He knows this sinking feeling, the way time is folding in on itself and slowing down. Like wading through a lake of molasses, like falling without ever reaching the bottom. Everything is draining of color, his knees begin to buckle and he thinks maybe he should be holding on to something, but he can’t remember where he is. He’s been trying to get somewhere. Where was he going?**_

_**A new sensation. He tries to concentrate. Touch; there’s a big, warm hand cradling his face.** _

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRIGGER warning for this chapter for graphic violence -- not that it's been lacking so far, but it does get kind of hairy for a paragraph or two here.  
> **   
>  **See first chapter for disclaimer.**

***

It might be morning. He can't be sure, doesn’t trust his instincts, but the birds are making that sharp sound outside again -- he forgets what it’s called, forgets if it’s supposed to hurt -- and the light doesn’t quite burn. Yet.

He’s been venturing out of the fog; he finds himself tasting the food he eats more often, noticing when he’s cold, and once or twice he’s been aware of a kind of pain that isn’t the ghost of a knife in his gut or the ripping of flesh, just the solid ache of unmoving muscles, tired bones.

And there’s Dean. All the love and the pain and the guilt of him, right there when he fades back into temporary, shattering lucidity. He can’t decide if his brother is the reason he’s been climbing up from inside the abyss, or the thing that keeps sending him back down.

Because something about talking, listening, watching Dean’s face as he tells him that all this fear and confusion are what’s real -- that he needs to stay -- feels impossible; feels like a punishment, and he knows all about punishment. But Dean wouldn’t want him to hurt, not unless there was a reason. And it feels like this Dean is real, not the twisted, hollow, grinning facsimile of his brother that was the worst part of the Cage.

And so he’s been trying to anchor himself, trying to string all of Dean’s words together and say the right things back, and sometimes it feels like he can. But it never lasts; things keep disintegrating, all his lights dimming without warning. Or maybe he just misses the warning -- it feels like Dean somehow sees it coming, and the last thing he hears is always the rasp of abandonment in his brother’s voice as he fades away along with everything else.

He wonders again if it’s possible to always be out, in the light where everything is too sharp and crisp and loud, every color saturated like blood ( _so much red; he kept thinking that the human body couldn’t hold that much blood, except he wasn’t human anymore, not down there with Lucifer, just a chew toy just pieces of string and bone just pain wrapped in weeping flesh carved out again and again smile Samuel let me see those teeth)._

But it’s morning, or it might be, and he’s here for now. He tries to focus, to get his bearings. He looks around the room.

His eyes trace the contour of a prone form occupying the TV chair, its back turned to him. He isn’t sure at first if it’s Dean, but then he spots a familiar shudder when something creaks above their heads (floorboards, Ellen must be upstairs. Has he spoken to her yet? He can’t remember. An overwhelming urge to apologize, to explain, to beg for forgiveness though he isn’t sure what for, exactly. For being here, maybe. For being here like this. For being).

Dean’s shoulders twitch again. It’s a motion Sam has come to know so well over recent years that it’s become part of his routine, like brushing his teeth or cleaning the weapons. So many dark motel rooms, watching his brother shake in his sleep under the blanket. After the first few tries he gave up on talking to him about any of it, on asking -- the nightmares, the jumping at noises, that time he woke up at around 3 A.M. and Dean was slumped in the corner by the door, hands pressed against his eyes and bare feet bleeding from the rock salt he himself had poured in the usual, neat line over the threshold before they turned in for the night.

He watches as Dean relaxes back into his version of sleep, and even if he could wake him up right now without taking a panicked punch to the face, he wouldn’t. He gets up slowly, the world still swimming around him, the cool air syrupy thick. Tries to decide what to do next.

Kitchen. Was he in the kitchen last night? A blurry image of Dean’s face (he was trying to smile and somehow that was too painful to watch), of Dean’s eyes red and tired, whisky on his breath. So much like dad. A dream, maybe; it’s hard to tell the difference between things that happen when he’s asleep and when he’s awake anymore.

The floor feels uneven as he walks. He leans on the doorjamb for balance before he looks up to study the small room. Nothing out of the ordinary: the sink is empty and clean, there’s a pan soaking on the stove. A faint smell of something charred and he tries hard not to think about a thing, not one thing because there are so many images that go with that smell and _no, no, no._

A rustle in the bushes outside the window catches his attention. He isn’t sure why his body reacts to it the way it does, why his hand reaches for the knife resting on the counter. He pulls back and stands there, unsure and swaying; he listens.

Nothing. Probably just a small animal or the wind. But now that he’s become aware of the outside again he suddenly wants to go, to feel that wind on his face. Before there’s too much light to bear, before he slips away.

Dean sighs behind him just as his hand touches the doorknob, and he turns on his heels, the room spinning and blurring at the edges of his vision. His brother is still fast asleep, though, and he tells himself the sound wasn’t a warning or a plea, _just walk out there he’ll be fine just go._

Miraculously, the door doesn’t make a sound as he slides through it _(not a ghost you’re here you’re real stop it)_ and he hears Dean’s hitched breathing from inside the house, fading away as he carefully advances across the front porch and inches his way down the steps.

The world is huge without walls to shield him from it, an assault of light and color and smell, too much to process. He squints at the trees, the gravel, the patches of grass that seem oddly familiar. A shiny, black mass just to the right of him catches his eye: the Impala, _home. Dean._ No, Dean is inside, asleep.

He suddenly wants to call for his brother, a reflex that comes out of nowhere, an old ache deep and vicious like a stab wound and he grits his teeth and breathes long and slow against the panic, _don’t, don’t_ \- -

Something solid. Something real. He turns back to look at the house. There’s light in a window upstairs, and he thinks he sees Ellen’s silhouette moving behind yellow curtains. He doesn’t remember getting here. How can he not remember getting here? Feels like he should know, like the mere thought should bring up information: an image of pulling up to the house, hugging Ellen, walking up those steps. But there’s nothing.

Wind chimes move in the breeze, a blur of red and purple and green swirling like strange, captive birds and he thinks that they must have come with the house, because no hunter would add another outside sound to listen for. He wonders why Ellen never took them down. Maybe she couldn’t. He should ask --

The fragmented, dreamy harmony the wind chimes make reaches him just then, somehow delayed, like his brain is having a hard time taking everything in at once. And suddenly the clear notes morph into something else, into the sharp pitch of glass breaking, shards raining on the floorboards of a different porch, and he remembers. He couldn’t see but he heard it, and the screaming too, and he tried to move away, swim back to safety because if she ever got to him again - -

The memory fades before he can grab at it, receding like a snake from a bite. He vaguely registers the sound of a car door slamming shut, too late and too far away because he’s spinning, or the world is spinning, something is making it hard to breathe again (again?). He should have called for Dean when he had the chance, he never should have gone outside like this, never should have gone on that hunt alone, Dean said to never go alone, Dean said _wait for me and dad keep your head down don’t look it in the eye_ , dad said _shoot it Sammy it’s okay you need to practice,_ why didn’t he just - -  

He knows this sinking feeling, the way time is folding in on itself and slowing down. Like wading through a lake of molasses, like falling without ever reaching the bottom. Everything is draining of color, his knees begin to buckle and he thinks maybe he should be holding on to something, but he can’t remember where he is. He’s been trying to get somewhere. Where was he going?

A new sensation. He tries to concentrate. Touch; there’s a big, warm hand cradling his face -- he smells gasoline and tobacco and alcohol and it’s not Dean, that much he knows, and can’t be dad because - -

“Bobby,” he hears himself say, and the name jolts him awake, pushes him up towards the surface and suddenly everything is sharp again, there’s sound and the wind is in his hair and he blinks, then focuses on a familiar face right in front of him.

Bobby’s eyes are wet, his smile is off somehow, though Sam can’t tell why. “Hey, boy. You talkin’ again, huh? It’s damn good to see you. How are you feeling?”

He tries to come up with an answer that won’t break anyone’s heart.

“B - Bobby,” he says again, and watches the man’s face crumple. As he feels himself being pulled into a crushing hug he wonders where all his words went, but decides he doesn’t miss them. He tucks his chin into the faded khaki of an old vest he’s forgotten about and sighs, feels Bobby’s arms grip him harder at the sound, feels fists curling against his back.

“Okay,” Bobby says, “okay. Okay.”

They all keep saying that.

*

Inside now, he’s somehow back inside the house, though he doesn’t remember deciding to go in. Bobby’s hand is on his shoulder and he doesn’t remember how it got there, either. His eyes land on Dean just as his brother sucks in a ragged breath at the sound of the door swinging closed behind them and struggles to sit up, his eyes wide and unfocused with sleep. “Sammy, don’t - “

“It’s okay,” Bobby says, “it’s just me. I got him.”

Dean seems to calm down at that, rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Shit, sorry, I thought -- “ He clumsily rises to his feet and makes his way towards them, and Sam thinks he looks too pale and exhausted for having just woken up. Bad night, probably.

“I’m okay, Dean,” he says, and his voice feels like it’s coming from the other side of the room, foreign and muted in a way that’s all wrong, but he ignores it for now. “Went outside for, um, some - - some fresh air?”

He doesn’t mean for it to sound like a question, but he suddenly isn’t sure why he was out there. Or whether going outside for air is something people do.

His brother’s face drains of what little color it had. He must have done something to cause this, but he can’t tell what.

“You - “ Dean takes a breath, then another, and forces a weak smile. “Sammy, wake me up next time you do that. I’ll come with you. Okay?”

“Probably a good idea,” Bobby says, and Sam follows his gaze down to find that he’s missing a shoe; he stares blankly at his mud stained sock for a moment, surprised. He didn’t even notice it, though he must have stepped on rocks in the front yard -- a dull ache in the sole of his foot tells him he did. It wasn’t there a moment ago. His fingers seek the scar on his left palm, _real, real._

He shrugs Bobby’s hand off and backs into the wall, accidentally hitting a shelf. The sharp pain in his upper back helps, he isn’t sure why, and he blinks. _Dean asked something._

“Oh,” he says, and then adds, sheepishly, “didn’t wanna wake you.”

“It’s okay.” Dean seems to mean it, too. He must be in serious trouble. “It’s just… it’s better if you don’t go outside alone, for right now. Until we figure this out, get back to normal.” The last word rings hollow, somehow, but Sam doesn’t linger on the tone because what, _what - -_   

He desperately doesn’t want to ask, but he has to know. “What do you mean, ‘figure this out’? What’s going on?” _Why am I like this please please --_

Dean looks wide awake now; he looks terrified. Sam can’t remember when he last saw his brother look so scared while being fully conscious. Maybe when the hellhounds came, back when he hadn’t died yet. What a strange life they lead.

“I’m… I don’t know if it’s a good idea to talk about it right now,” Dean says, and the distant ring of alarm in the back of Sam’s brain upgrades itself to a siren, because fuck, if Dean is afraid to even tell him - -

“Please,” he hears himself say, the words pushing out through numb lips because he only has so long before he’ll be gone again, and his body is already severing ties, disconnecting from his mind, or maybe it’s the other way around, “please, just tell me. I - -  I can’t. Like this.”

Dean looks at Bobby, and Sam wants to cry because now he _knows_ his brother is scared, and suddenly he’s not all that sure if he wants to hear his response. He sits heavily down on the sofa, his hands digging into the cushions. _Real._

“Please,” he says again.

***

 Dean’s head is pounding when he first wakes up early in the morning, heart in his throat. He isn’t sure why, for a second, thinks it’s one of his nightmares, but then the door makes another noise and he remembers. _Sammy. Shit, where’s Sam don’t let him go - -_

But his brother is standing a few feet away from him, Bobby by his side, firm hand planted on Sam’s shoulder. He can breathe.

He doesn’t ask the older man what he’s doing in Ellen’s house, or why he apparently drove through the night to get there. Bobby came because there was no other way, same as there’s never been any other way for either of them. Dean is just fine with that.

It takes him a minute to really get what Sam is saying when he speaks, because his brother sounds so… normal. _Went outside for some fresh air,_ no biggie. Last night Sam was so fragile, so unsure, struggling to complete sentences, to understand. Now he seems practically himself, and even though Dean knows that won’t last, the sheer relief that floods him almost makes him cry.

It only lasts a second before the meaning of the words truly hits him. Sam went outside, unguarded, unsafe, alone. He could have blanked out and wandered off to God knows where, completely vulnerable to everything out there that would love to hunt a Winchester. Or to humans, not like there aren’t enough of those that would be a danger to him when he’s so open, so damn exposed. _Shit_.

He tells Sam not to do that, tries to sound casual, like it’s completely normal for a man in his thirties to need a chaperone just to go out to the front yard. But one of the disadvantages of his brother being focused and fully aware is he can’t fool him. Sam asks the question they’ve been dreading. He wants to know what’s wrong with him.

Dean looks at Bobby, suddenly helpless. _I can’t tell him what happened. He’ll go away again, I can’t, how - -_

Bobby nods, tries to smile, and Dean knows what he’s thinking. It’s time. Leaving Sam to wonder why he keeps losing hours and days and pieces of his consciousness is unfair. If he’s aware enough to notice that there’s something wrong, he needs to be told.

But it’s fucking hard to get the words out.

“Alright, Sammy,” he says, and then stops.

There’s a long moment of silence in which he and Sam float on what feels like opposite ends of the room, a wasteland of space between them wide and empty, and Dean’s voice echoes in his own ears as he finally continues.

“You’re in… in recovery, I guess. You were taken by a witch you were following. She, um. She used a willpower binding spell.”

Sam turns a deathly shade of pale and says nothing. Just nods. Dean continues, feeling like he’s draining the life right out of his brother with every word. It’s no use; Sam won’t let him back away from this.

“I don’t have much intel on her, because I didn’t know you were on a case.” He keeps his tone neutral, just stating the facts, definitely not saying _God damn it Sammy, if you had just told me I would have gotten her sooner._ He knows it isn’t fair, that Sam just needed breathing room and couldn’t have known he was in over his head. Not like he hasn’t done the exact same thing when there was tension between them, keeping Sam out of the loop just to gain some alone time.

“We kind of got on each other’s nerves the week before, and I guess we both needed some space. By the time I realized you were gone, you were already under. Do you… do you remember the cabin?”

The recognition in Sam’s eyes at the sound of the last word is crushing; Dean can almost hear memories click into place, like moving parts of an intricate bomb.

Sam nods again, his breath hitching. “I... yeah, kind of. I remember she made me sit, and then I remember there was screaming - - “ he stops abruptly and looks up at his brother. “You killed her?”

Dean nods. “She had you tied up – I guess she knew the spell would only work a little bit longer – and she was waiting for me when I pulled up. She was on the front porch, having some fucking lemonade.” He rubs his shoulder where it still hurts, will likely hurt for a long time. “She started giving me this speech, like a goddamn movie villain. _You need to know what being hunted feels like,_ that sort of thing. Then she talked about you.”

He can still see those icy grey eyes lighting up, _I had other plans, but we’ll just have to work with what we’ve got since Sammy’s out of commission._ Feels it all over again, his heartbeat stuttering at the words, his vision going red as he launched at her. Jagged glass grinding against the wood under his knees, the smell of lemons and blood and then earth -- they must have rolled right off the porch, though he doesn’t remember the way down -- and the sound of her voice reciting in Latin. Her lips forming the words around broken teeth as she lifted her grinning face from the mud and turned to him, the glint of a knife - -

He shakes his head. “I had to kill her, and I did, and then I went inside the cabin. You were -- you were sitting in a chair, and your eyes were open, but you were pretty out of it. And you stayed that way,” he tries to keep his voice level, “for… for a while. My guess is that’s why she locked you in there and went outside to wait for me. Something went wrong and she couldn’t get to you anymore.” 

Sam is blinking hard, like he’s trying to process the information and failing. He looks simultaneously exhausted and terrified, his fingers trailing up from the faded fabric of the sofa to dig into his palm again.

“Hey, stay with me. You okay?” Dean reaches out, but his brother flinches away, his eyes glassy and his breathing labored. “N - - don’t. Don’t.”

“Sammy, look at me. Don’t go under again. Hey! You’re safe, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

Sam looks up wordlessly -- at least he’s making eye contact -- and Dean suppresses a shudder at the sight of that familiar, vacant expression.

“You’re not back there. She’s dead, and you’re with me and with Ellen. Come on.”

Sam’s gaze seems to clear a little at the sound of Ellen’s name.

“We’re -- “

He looks around, then sighs.

“Right.” He stares down at his feet for a long time, then frowns.

“How’d you get me here?”

Dean closes his eyes. “You weren’t doing so well, but you were conscious. So I got you to follow me to the car, and I drove us here. We stopped for the night at a motel. You probably don’t remember that part.”

Sam sighs again. “No.”

“That’s okay,” Ellen says from the doorway -- damn woman can be as sneaky as a mouse, not that she needs to sneak around in her own home -- and comes in to sit by Sam. “Hey, Singer.”

Bobby nods and produces a noise that’s probably meant to sound amicable. Sam looks up at Ellen, his eyes too bright, his lips pressed tightly together like he’s desperate to keep something in. He’s always done this, Dean thinks; as emotional as Sam is, all that openness only lasts until he worries that his pain might be a burden.

He watches his brother lower his gaze back to the carpet, fighting through whatever wave of misery is attacking him at the moment. Sam curls into himself, the corners of bony shoulder blades that muscle could never quite cover protruding through the soft flannel of his old shirt like the stems of severed wings _(don’t think about how Cas was torn apart in that field, about the fine mist of blood and abandoned grace in the air, stop just stop)_. Dean wants to gather every blanket in the house and wrap it around his brother like that will somehow cure him, pour a bowl of John Winchester’s sad version of soup down his throat, because he doesn’t know what else to do for him, and that uselessness hurts almost as much as watching Sam struggling to hang on to awareness.

Ellen shifts to sit closer to the hunched figure on the sofa. “We’ve been missing you,” she says, and Dean wills his eyes to stop stinging, his throat not to close, “you’ve been kind of… away in your head a lot. Do you know why?”

Sam blinks, tears that have been hanging from his eyelashes falling into his lap unchecked.

“N - no.”

He’s not crying now, though, not anymore. His voice sounds far away and sleepy, and Dean’s chest hurts, and he desperately wants it all to stop. He’s so tired. _This will never be over._

“Sam,” Ellen presses, and Sam shivers like he’s forgotten she was sitting next to him, takes a raspy breath.

“S- sorry,” he says, and his eyes search for Dean’s, “I - - I think I… maybe I need to lie down for a minute.”

 _That’s good,_ Dean tells himself, _he can tell when it’s too much now, he knows when he needs a break._ ”Sure, Sammy,” he says, threading his arms under Sam’s and helping him up to allow Ellen to clear the space and pull out the mattress. “Let’s just get you over here for a sec, okay?”

Sam nods dreamily. “Okay,” he says, looking at Dean like he’s trying to remember what he’s agreeing to, “um.”

And then he’s gone, face going slack and body leaning heavily forward in Dean’s grip, not quite unconscious but definitely not present, _shit. Shit._

Bobby seems to share Dean’s sentiment. “Dammit, I thought he was doin’ better,” he says, hand reaching out to touch Sam’s arm and flinching at the utter lack of response. “Is he - - ”

“It’s fine,” Dean says, avoiding the older man’s eyes as he helps Sam down. “It’s just a lot to take in.” His hand hovers over his brother’s shoulder as Sam slumps on the mattress, eyes closing and face grey. “You’re good, Sammy. Just breathe.”

He can feel Bobby’s eyes drilling into him as he sits down by Sam’s feet and leans back, but he still can’t look up. _Stop watching me like that, he’s okay, we’ll be okay._

“What,” he finally snaps.

Bobby plays his role. Or tries, at least. “Watch your tone,” he says, but there’s no heat behind the words, no real anger, and his face softens as Dean does finally look up. “We need to talk. Probably better if we do it outside.”

Even the thought of getting back up and walking out to the yard suddenly feels like a herculean effort, and Dean tries to find a way to say _no, can’t, please,_ but then Bobby adds, “I got an idea. Someone Sam needs to see. I don’t know if - - ”

Dean isn’t sure how, but he’s up on his feet. “Okay,” he says, and somehow his voice is steady, “okay, let’s go.”

 ____________________________

_**Next chapter:** _

_**Soon, I hope. It's mostly written.** _


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **See first chapter for disclaimers.**

***

It’s going to be a relatively nice day, seems like, and Bobby thinks that’s a small mercy as he watches Dean squint at the sun. They’re walking back and forth in Ellen’s yard -- weird way to have a conversation, for sure, but they both need to move, and he knows Dean won’t be able to concentrate unless they’re within earshot of his brother. No pensive walk in the woods for this talk.

“So,” Dean finally says, and hearing him try not to sound hopeful is too damn painful, “this person you think Sam should see.”

Bobby clears his throat before he speaks. “Now, don’t bite my head off, but she’s -- well, she’s a psychologist. I know what you’re gonna say, but the woman is sharp as a tack, and she’s seen the shit we deal with, too. Knows about hunters. So that’s -- “

He stops mid-sentence, watching Dean stiffen, his eyes growing distant. He sighs.

“Look, I know talkin’ doesn’t come easy to you boys -- shit, I’ll take a pissed off wendigo over talking to a stranger about my damn feelings any day, I get it -- but it doesn’t look like we got a choice here anymore. Your brother’s not doing well.”

Dean still isn’t looking at him.

“What makes you think Sam needs - - “ he cuts himself off, shaking his head. “Even if she knows what’s out there, why would you think a _therapist_ has any idea how to treat something that a fucking spell did to him?”

“How ‘bout because it wasn’t the spell that did it?”

Re-stating the fact they’ve all been tiptoeing around is inevitable at this point, but Bobby still feels like an asshole. Dean goes quiet, and something about his expression makes Bobby think of the way he used to look when John’s Impala would rumble out of the Singer Salvage Yard on its way to another too-long hunt, all those years ago, leaving him behind. Pale and drawn and abandoned.

Sam was usually the one who had trouble holding back tears when their dad dropped them off in Sioux Falls, at least when he was young; Dean would just watch the car’s tail lights until it turned the corner, and then he’d busy himself with his and Sam’s duffle bags, dragging them inside the house like the fate of the world depended on it and yelling at his brother to follow.

But Bobby never missed the look in the kid’s eyes as he watched his dad go; it was there every evening at the kitchen table, too, when he had to tell the boys that John wouldn’t be picking them up the next day, either. And he watched Dean’s face when his father did appear -- bruised and exhausted and sometimes hungover, too, if it was around _that_ anniversary -- to finally take them with him. The undercurrent just beneath that happiness, that relief. The life they were returning to.

Maybe it’s just that he’s never forgotten what it feels like, being a kid who can’t say _everything hurts too much,_ either because you don’t know how or because it’s an adult at the center of your world doing the hurting. Watching Dean was painful because he thought he saw that in his eyes; not that there was any comparing John Winchester to his own father, but there was still plenty of pain and solitude in those boys’ lives. And Dean emitted heartache from day one, whether he knew it or not, like a low hum of anguish that Bobby wished he was able to stop listening for. Sam wasn’t far behind. Sometimes Bobby thinks the reason John was so inexplicably blind to the damage hunting life was inflicting on Mary’s boys was that if he knew, _really_ knew, he would have preferred to burn with her. 

But John lived the way he lived, and then he didn’t. And Bobby doesn’t like to think too much about that young, freckled face staring at him in mute misery from behind the rear window of the moving car. Sammy struggling up on the back seat next to his brother to wave an excited goodbye as they headed for yet another motel, still smiling wide and true back then because he got his dad back and his world was fixed, _bye Bobby, bye_.

No reason to remember all that, to go picking at old wounds when there’s enough to deal with in the present. But there’s a flicker in Dean’s expression now, a hint of that old pain that didn’t belong on an eight year old, or a ten year old, or a twelve year old’s features. His voice is small as he says, “you really think Sam is - - that all of this has nothing to do with the spell? You think he’s just... gone?”

Bobby shakes his head. “I think the spell jumpstarted something that was already waitin’ to happen. Same as I told you on the phone when you boys were on your way here, no willpower binding spell is that powerful, not for this long. Definitely not after the witch is dead. Sam was probably dealing with some shit he wasn’t ready to talk about, and this whole fiasco came at him when he was… it probably caught him off guard.”

He reaches out to stop Dean, _don’t walk, listen._ Keeps his hand on his shoulder. “And I don’t think he’s gone. If I thought that, I woulda kept my mouth shut. He probably just needs help digging himself out of whatever hole he’s stuck in, is all. And maybe Jane could do something about that.”

He studies Dean’s face for a minute before he adds, “I say we give it a try. Honestly, at this point, we got nothing to lose.”

Dean raises his head, eyes darkening. Angry. Angry is okay, he can work with angry. “We sure as shit got something to lose. He just started communicating again, Bobby, what if we -- what if this woman pushes him too far? He could get worse. He could go all the way under.”

Dean’s voice catches on the last words, his gaze wanders back down. “Maybe all he needs is some more time.”

Bobby nods. “Yeah, maybe. But he might get better a lot faster with some help. Look, I’m not sayin’ we hand your brother over to Jane and just let her do whatever, we can talk to her about it ahead of time, make sure it’s not too much for him. I think we need to take a chance here. Could save Sam a lot of pain, and you, too.”

Dean stays quiet for a long time, moving away from Bobby to walk back and forth in measured steps by the fence, his bandaged hand hovering over the uneven pickets. They can hear the clanking of dishes from inside the house, Ellen speaking softly to Sam. She probably came down for her morning coffee, is probably trying to get him to eat something. No sound from Sam, though.

“Yeah, okay,” Dean finally says, and he’s heading back in before Bobby can respond. “Give this Jane a call. I mean, see if she’s even willing to come up here. If she is, I’ll -- I’ll arrange… something.”

He stops by the porch steps, doesn’t turn back as he says, “thanks, Bobby.”

“Sure thing.”

Bobby stays in the yard a while, staring at the closed door and listening to the sounds from inside. _Okay, we’re making progress. Maybe. Assuming Jane will even pick up the phone._

He can hear Dean and Ellen talking (still no sound from Sam), smells bacon and eggs frying, same as those early mornings in his own kitchen, way back in the day. He can’t help but smile at the memory of those two messy heads of hair bouncing down the stairs, the boys’ loud yawns at the kitchen table; the sound of their stupid, stupid arguments over breakfast.

The mornings, at least, were good, so much so that it took him longer than he’d care to admit to get used to the silence when he was alone again.

After dark was a challenge, though. Five year old Sam sobbing into his pillow as Bobby passed by the boys’ room, already so well-rehearsed at keeping his agony to himself _._ There was no comforting him at night, no words that could make him believe he was going home, no safety you could offer him when Dean wasn’t awake. Not that his big brother ever got much rest, as far as Bobby could tell; on literally every one of his midnight checks, he’d find that Dean had somehow migrated in his sleep to the corner of the mattress and curled up there, heels pressed against the wall. His bed was a mess of pulled sheets and tangled blankets every damn morning; that boy’s worst battles always took place where guns and knives were useless.

Same as they do now.

Bobby frowns at the sky, checks his watch. Way too early to be sitting out here thinking about the old days, not that there’s ever a good time for it. He heads inside.

Dean is standing by the stove, fishing long strips of bacon out of the frying pan and talking to Ellen about Cooper, a hunter they all knew who died last year. The guy was funny, and loyal, too -- one of the few hunters in Bobby’s area who didn’t say a word about killing the Winchesters after Sam had freed Lucifer. Dean only met him two or three times, usually while out drinking, but apparently he made a lasting impression.

Ellen is leaning against the wall, alternating between laughing and scowling at Dean’s intense reconstruction of a friendly super bowl debate with a neighboring table which somehow devolved into a full-on bar fight that spilled out into the street. “It’s all fun and games until you have to clean the joint after you morons are done,” she says, and Bobby thinks it must have been a weekly, if not daily headache for her and Jo back in Harvelle's Roadhouse.

Ellen’s hand is on the back of Sam’s chair, and Bobby can’t tell if it’s to let him know she’s there or for balance. Probably both, because by the looks of her, she didn’t sleep much last night. Again.

Sam is seated by the kitchen table, staring dully at Dean’s waving arms; Bobby can tell by the awkward way his body is positioned on the chair that he didn’t get to the kitchen, or sit down, on his own. Dean must have somehow convinced him to get up and then dragged him there, the way he often does when his brother is too out of it to argue and docile enough to follow.

Sam seems to be trying, though, not quite as empty and absent as before, eyes wandering up to Dean’s face and brow furrowing. _He can’t keep up,_ Bobby thinks, and he suddenly remembers sitting in that too-white day room with Martin after Albuquerque. The metal screen mesh on the windows made him feel like there wasn’t enough air, like it was a prison hospital; Martin didn’t seem to mind. He remembers telling the guy it was going to be okay, _you just need some time off from hunting, I ain’t worried about you._ And he remembers Martin’s eyes, slow and tired, watching him talk like he was trying to read his lips from miles away; nothing registering. He stopped visiting after the first two years, and Martin never called, probably because he couldn’t remember his own name half the time.

 _Talk about_ **_that_** _,_ he thinks, and the pain catches him off guard the way it always does. They don’t trade stories about fellow hunters who ended up like Martin, ever; or the ones who ended up worse -- checked out in some hospital bed because they got behind the wheel with one too many drinks in them, or because they walked into a hunt that went sideways in that one second when exhaustion kicked in, or just because of pure bad luck. The Coopers of the world they can deal with, easier to remember the ones who are dead than the ones who are barely living. And isn’t that just all kinds of fucked up.

He sits down by Sam, rests a casual hand on his shoulder. Sam flinches a bit, though his eyes never leave Dean’s face. _At least he’s focusing on something._

“How’re you doing, kid?”

He’s not sure if he was expecting an answer, but Sam says, “I’m… okay, Bobby.” The words sound flat, lacking intent or energy. Bobby sighs.

“Just checking. You know, because of -- you remember what Dean told you before, right?”

He realizes he’s half-hoping that Sam will say _no_ , _what,_ that the conversation about the cabin will turn out to be one of the many things that get erased, because he has a nasty feeling that the new information is going to make things so much worse.

But Sam nods. “Yeah,” he says, and his eyes close for a long moment before they open again, and he moves in his chair and looks down like he’s just now realizing that he’s sitting. “Um, yeah. I’m getting bits and pieces back from… from there. Don’t remember much about after, though.”

He turns back to Bobby, studies his face with that familiar frown, still Sam after all. “You look tired. You and Dean hunt something last night?”

 _He thinks that’s why I’m here,_ Bobby realizes, and the fact that Sam doesn’t even consider his own breakdown sufficient reason for him to take that drive makes him ache.

“No, just… just visiting,” he says. “I need to get some things out of the car. Be right back.”

Sam nods again, eyes back on Dean, then on Ellen. He seems surprised to see her.

“Hey,” he says, smiling weakly, and then struggles up from his seat to offer her the chair as he sees her expression, “you feeling okay?”

Bobby heads for the door as fast as he can, because the lump in his throat is the kind that needs to be dealt with somewhere other than in front of Sam. Or Dean, or Ellen, for that matter. Preferably with something 80 proof. He opens the trunk of his car and leans in, breathing fast, hands gripping the metal frame hard as another wave of sorrow hits.

_There’s no such thing as fair in this world, you know this._

_You know this._

***

Days turn into weeks. Over a month and a half since the cabin, Ellen realizes one afternoon, as she sits out on the porch with Sam by her side. He’s watching the wind chimes, seeming more alert than usual, his brow furrowed. _Trying to remember,_ she thinks; she’s become pretty good at reading his expressions. Although she wonders what wind chimes could possibly remind him of. Maybe a house he visited on some case? She doubts Sam has ever lived anywhere he felt was his enough to bother with decorations like that.

_Jo laughing at her in Home Depot, holding up a discount wreath made entirely of golden, plastic Christmas balls. The cart is full of the usual, duct tape and batteries for the flashlights and beer and rock salt and road food, and she isn’t sure what made her wander over to this aisle to begin with -- neither of them is into home decor or the holidays, not since Bill died. But they’re standing there and Jo tries to wear the tacky thing like a crown, laughing her ass off. And she almost buys it just for that, just because her daughter suddenly looks her age, happy and silly for one rare moment._

Sam tears his eyes away from the wind chimes and looks over at her, and she wonders, not for the first time, how he always picks up on her grief like that.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, then seems skeptical when she promises him that it’s nothing, that she’s fine.

“I really am, Sam,” she insists. “How are _you_ doing? You seem a little better today.”

Sam nods thoughtfully. “Haven’t lost time so far. Not since this morning.”

Ellen raises an eyebrow. “At all? That’s great. See, you’re on the right path.”

Sam shrugs, his face falling. “I guess.”

She can tell who he’s thinking about. Dean’s been drinking more and sleeping less, and she can’t really blame him for that; nights have been a challenge -- that’s the understatement of the year -- and she doesn’t think Sam is fully aware of his episodes then, of the brutal quality they take on. There has been more than one occasion on which both she and Bobby had to literally hold Sam down, with Dean staring at the scene from the corner of the room, wearing that look on his face that tells her he’s seeing a whole lot more than just the three of them.  

As far as she can tell, flashbacks are about the only thing that can render Dean useless while his brother is in distress, derailing him within seconds. And the only thing that’s more painful than watching him go through them is the way he shuts down once they’re over, the way he goes silent and dark, recedes from the world. Even from Sam. That alone tells her how bad it is. Sam tends to drift on Dean’s bad days, like he senses that his tether to reality is fraying and lets go.

Secretly she thinks Dean could benefit as much as Sam from Bobby’s idea to get outside help, and she does wonder what’s been keeping him from making that happen. It’s been a while since Dean spoke to Bobby’s contact, and she knows (because she eavesdropped) that the conversation ended with a promise to set a date for Jane to visit; undeniable progress. Except Dean seems to be stuck at that last step. Too overwhelmed, maybe -- she knows better than to ask him directly. Not when he’s like this.

Today has been uneventful so far, though. Dean spent the morning under the porch steps, cursing and hammering away, then dragged himself into the Impala and drove off to get groceries they didn’t need. _Worse things in the world than a little cabin fever_ , Bobby would likely say. It’s been around a week since the older hunter left for Sioux Falls -- “I’ll keep you in the loop,” Dean told him, “we got a handle on this, you should get to sleep in your own bed” -- and she misses him more than she could have predicted.

Something about Bobby going back home makes Sam’s condition feel more permanent, too. Like they’re disassembling the war room in favor of learning to live with a reality that was supposed to be a temporary crisis.  

Times like this, when she and Sam are alone in the house, tend to be challenging. Even though he’s been doing a little better, Sam is still helpless a lot of the time, too often unaware of his surroundings for hours. She is used to the silence of being alone, but the silence of another person lost inside their private torment as they sit in the room with her is something else entirely. It has a palpable weight that wears on her; watching Sam like that with no distractions leaves her exhausted, though she’d never tell Dean. The worst part is when Sam looks pained, not just vacant but trapped. It’s then that she finds it hard to breathe, her arm around his back and her hand combing through his hair, making false promises that _it’s okay, it’ll be okay you’re safe shhh shhh._

Sometimes she’s too afraid to close her eyes as they sit like that, because if she doesn't look, she can almost forget it’s someone else’s kid she’s comforting and not her own. She wonders if Jo went fast, if she went mercifully, if she knew she was going. If she wanted her mama. No one there to pet her hair, to lie to her that it’s okay. _Stop, stop._

It’s not the same. Sam isn’t dying. If anything, he’s getting stronger; there haven’t been sudden bouts of unconsciousness in a while. But that also means he’s awake for the worst parts of it. Dean refuses to say if he knows what (or who) his brother might be seeing when he’s truly terrified, but Ellen thinks she can guess. It makes her skin crawl, makes her absurdly grateful when Sam slides back into blank apathy, because at least then she can tell herself he isn’t feeling anything as she walks him around the living room or in the yard like an ailing horse, gets him to sit with her at the kitchen table. As she presses a glass of cold water into his hand and wraps his lax fingers around it again and again, _drink that, honey, come on._ Talks to him without getting a response.

It’s rare that she and Sam are out here for long; he seems to get overwhelmed within minutes, even when it’s his idea, even when he’s doing fine. There’s something about being out here that gets to him. She can usually tell when he’s had too much; hard to miss the way he starts stalling, all his systems slowing down, the way his eyes go hazy and his pupils dilate. If they stay outside long enough for his speech to start slurring, it can take all day to bring him back.

She studies his face again, looking for signs she hopes she won't find yet. “You feel like going back inside?”

Sam doesn’t answer her, looking out and away at the road that leads to the yard.

“Sam,” she says, “Sam. Hey. You with me?”

He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I’m -- do you need help making breakfast?”

So much for not losing time. “It’s noon,” she says gently, and when Sam doesn’t answer she gets up, her back protesting. Some days the pain is all she can think about, a stripped electrical wire running through her spine and down her right leg, the rest of the world and its occupants fading like ghosts in her peripheral vision. This week has been tolerable, though, which is a small miracle.

Neither of her house guests has commented on how much worse she is compare to last time they met, no questions have been asked, which is a relief but not a surprise. Some injuries sneak up on you long after you've put the hunt out of your mind; these men know all about that.

“Let’s go inside, okay? Dean should be back soon. Sam.”

She moves to block his field of vision ( _he gets stuck sometimes,_ Dean said, _if he's not hearing you and you see his eyes lock on something, just get in his way_ ). Reaches out to take his chin. “Sam, hey. Try to stay grounded, okay? We’re going back inside. Can you get up?”

Sam blinks, his eyes focusing on hers.

“Wha -- oh, shit. Sorry.” He looks down at his hands. “I thought I was - - oh.”

Ellen tries to smile at him, but he avoids her eyes, shakes his head. “Yeah, maybe we should.”

Once they’re inside he surveys the living room, frowning. “Hey, Ellen,” he says, bending down to pick a pillow off the floor behind the sofa, “I think I’m gonna do some cleaning, okay? Me and Dean have been making this place look like Bobby’s back room.”

Ellen shrugs. “Sure, if you’re up to it.” The state of the place has very little to do with the Winchesters -- Dean has actually been surprisingly good at minimizing his and Sam’s presence, though Sam isn’t aware enough most of the time to notice him folding blankets and tucking away boots -- and everything to do with the fact that, most days, she just doesn't have the energy. But Sam is suddenly on a mission, heading for the vacuum cleaner that’s been collecting dust in the corner of the room, looking determined like he just found his life goal.

“Maybe I’ll clean the kitchen after that,” he says, “I mean, if that’s okay. Yeah.”

As he turns around and raises a questioning eyebrow at Ellen’s chuckle, she blurts, “nothing. Okay. I’ll be upstairs, call me if you need help.”

Sam snorts. “If the mop attacks, I promise I’ll let you know.”

“That’s the spirit.”

***

“Sir? Anything I can help you with today?”

Dean looks up, belatedly realizing the voice is talking to him.

“Huh?”

It’s a young woman with blue and green streaks in her hair, wearing a vest, obviously a store employee. She’s looking at him funny. He’s been standing in the office supplies aisle for a while now, staring at a _Back to School_ ad. There’s a bunch of students in the picture, insanely happy and fresh-faced and well-dressed, having the time of their lives on what he assumes is meant to be a college bench.

He doesn’t know if Sam had friends in Stanford, before everything went to shit. He must have made some friends if he had Jess, right? Means he was being social. But Dean never brought it up, at first because Jess was dead and everything was too raw to touch, and then because it was just easier not to. No point in making Sam think about a life he couldn’t have. Plus, Dean was in no rush to remember the way that year went on his end. So he never asked.

Now he wonders if he’ll ever get to, and about all the other things he and Sam put off for later, for a better time, for when they could breathe a little. It doesn’t feel like he’s ever going to be able to take a deep breath again.

The woman is still staring at him. _Right, talk._ “No, that’s okay,” he says, “I, um - -  I was just thinking. Thanks.”

She nods and walks away, visibly relieved. And he thinks about maybe picking up one of the leather-bound notebooks for Sam, just in case he feels like writing. Decides against it. _Stupid._ A neon keeps buzzing and flickering over his head, and he can’t stop looking behind him even though he _knows_ it’s just faulty wiring, and the damn music they have on in the background is grating on his nerves and his hands are suddenly sweaty. _No._

He’s outside, leaning against a parking meter, swallowing hard and trying to focus on a crack in the pavement, trying to ignore the nausea. The fact that he can feel his heartbeat in his eyes doesn’t help. He realizes he’s left everything in the shopping cart back in the store, though he can’t for the life of him remember what he was trying to buy.

“--ight?”

Takes him a second to decipher the sound. Someone's asking if he’s alright. Man in a nice suit, holding a coffee cup. Looks concerned. Damn, Ellen wasn’t kidding about this being a small town. Apparently some random dude losing his shit on a street corner is big news around here.

“Y- yeah, ‘m fine,” he manages to choke out, _God just leave me alone please._

“You sure?” The man says, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm, and Dean looks up at him, and the guy walks away without another word.

At least he still has the Serial Killer Glare down.

In the car he closes his eyes, sinks down in the seat, both hands on the steering wheel. He thinks about driving home to Sammy, back to that practiced smile of _everything’s okay, we’re gonna get through this,_ about the fading marks on his knuckles and the blood on the tree bark. _I can’t keep doing this I just can’t help help -_

He wills his mind to stop forming the name, to stop expecting the plea to work. The space on the seat next to him is empty, will remain empty; no rustle of feathers, no crumpled trench coat and blue tie and those damn sensible shoes, no raised eyebrow at his yelp of surprise, _shit, Cas, what’d I tell you about popping in on me like that_ \- -

He presses the heel of his palm against his eye, careful where the orbital bones never quite mended right. Lately the headaches have been getting worse, probably has something to do with the drinking. He needs to stop by a pharmacy before he drives back, otherwise he’ll be standing at Ellen’s door green around the gills as well as empty handed when they ask him what he went out to get.

When he pulls up by the house half an hour later, with some Advils in his stomach and a bag full of whatever random drugstore crap he managed to find (okay, and a six pack), he turns off the ignition and just sits there for a while. He’s anxious to go in and see if Sam is okay, but he doesn’t have his game face on quite yet.

For a moment he’s tempted to stretch out on the seat inside the Impala and just lie there, his jacket under his head, the way he and Sam have spent more nights than he can count. There’s a perfectly good couch at Ellen’s, but he can’t rest there. That’s where he keeps watch.

 _Cas sitting by his hospital bed after Alastair broke that devil’s trap and beat him half to death, stone-faced and silent on that pale blue visitor’s chair, watching him sleep and wake. Saying nothing when Dean turned away from his gaze, **get away from me.**_  
  
_The angel watching him break, studying the tears streak their path down his bruised face in that same maddening way he always observed him, like he wasn't quite sure what he was witnessing or why he couldn’t look away._  
  
_His own voice, cracked and gravelly from Alastair's grip on his throat (always there, still there, like those fingerprints burned themselves into his trachea), telling Cas **I can't do it, it's too big.**_  
  
_Cas' silence after he said, already knowing the futility of it but desperate enough to pretend he had a choice, **find someone else.**_

He takes a deep breath, gets out. Twenty-three steps to Ellen’s front door, twenty-eight if you consider the stairs. He counts.

 

\--------------------------------

_**Next chapter: in progress, and features a lot more of Sam's POV. And a hospital, I'm afraid.** _

_**Sorry if this one is all over the place. Just... challenging writing conditions. I think the next chapter is better. *Gulp*** _


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **For once, I managed to update twice in the span of less than two weeks. Yay?**
> 
> **• ***MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING*** for this chapter: graphic description of past self-injury. I _strongly_ recommend skipping those 3 or so paragraphs if you have any history with SI; you absolutely don't need them to keep up with the plot.**
> 
> **• I've only ever been on the receiving end of hospital care, so I'm sure lots of what I wrote in the chapter (and will write in the next one) is very far removed from reality.**
> 
> **• Other than that, the usual warnings apply, as does the disclaimer - see chapter one for those.**

*

Sam is passed out on the sofa when Dean enters the house. He does that sometimes now – just drops into inexplicably heavy sleep, like everything catches up with him all at once. Sometimes Dean finds himself wondering if it’s just the basic act of remembering where he is that his brother finds so exhausting; ever since the thought occurred to him a while ago, he can’t seem to leave it alone. Sam the honor student, the guy who would get so into research before a hunt that he’d forget to eat or sleep, his geek brother who at all times held such an immense mental catalogue of knowledge and references he was a walking library - - it’s hard to reconcile that with who he is now, who he has been. It’s not the knowledge that Dean misses – he could give a shit about the knowledge – it’s the essence of Sam.

He’s been telling himself that this is absolutely not their new normal. That those lucid moments when Sam is practically his old self again are not remains, they’re the beginning; his first steps back. That it’s still a process.

When Sam blanks out in the middle of conversations, just trails off and goes dead-eyed with no apparent reason, and he has to reach over and squeeze his shoulder to make him reboot – and then watch his blank stare as awareness fades back in, achingly slow – Dean tells himself that it’s just overload. When Sam can’t remember Bobby’s name, his eyes wide and desperate because he _knows_ but can’t quite get at the information, Dean tells him it’s just a bad day. His brother has been struggling to believe him, and he’s been trying hard to sound like he believes himself.   

Now Sam is draped over Ellen’s old sofa like he’s barely got enough energy to breathe, eyes closed, face pale, and damp strands of tangled hair sticking to his neck. He’s wearing one of Dean’s old T-shirts, which he wasn’t this morning. _He took a shower,_ Dean thinks, and he wants to cry when he realizes that he is both relieved and proud. _This is where we are now,_ _I’m throwing my brother a parade for deciding to clean himself without being told; for making it out of the bathroom without curling in a ball on the floor._

But he _**is**_ proud.

Which is why he makes the mistake of reaching out, slow and steady, and resting his hand on the top of Sam’s head the way he used to when they were little, too much love and pain and homesickness swelling inside him not to make contact. _Good, Sammy, you did good_.

Sam’s eyes go from closed to open and unblinking so seamlessly and completely it catches Dean by surprise. There’s nothing in them but terror, roaring through his throat and spilling out of his mouth thick and dark as demon smoke, even though he makes no sound. He’s frozen, watching his brother the way Dean knows, is sure, he watched Lucifer back in the Cage; a trapped bird watching a snake unhinge its jaw. He doesn’t try to move.

Dean pulls his hand away -- it feels like pulling a knife out of a wound -- and sits down on the carpet, suddenly unsure that his legs will carry him to the nearest chair.

“It’s me, Sammy,” he finally manages to rasp, though he knows words won’t help. And they don’t.

Sam remains unmoving and mute for hours, his haunted eyes watching the spot where Dean sat long after his older brother leaves it to bring him a blanket, to go splash water on his own numb face, to throw up in the back yard. No amount of pleading or reassurances seems to break through: it’s like all of Sam shut down at that exact point where he woke up, and there is nothing they can do to salvage him from the horror he is trapped in. It’s all sickly familiar.

Ellen keeps an eye on Sam when Dean stumbles out back again just after sundown, and he somehow finds himself lying on the warm ground, his face pressed hard against the grass, his eyes wet. Even with the crickets, he can hear Sam’s rapid, shallow breathing in his head.

It’s a while until Sam’s body wears itself out and he drifts back into sleep. Both Dean and Ellen are red-eyed and pale with exhaustion when he finally blinks back into awareness almost nine hours later, remembering nothing.

“Everything okay?” Sam asks, studying their faces in a way that used to say _I know it’s not,_ but now says _please tell me it is._

Dean nods stiffly, studying the bottom of his glass before he puts it down on the coffee table.

“Sure. How are you feeling?”

Sam frowns.

“Like I slept for a while. Still really tired, though. Was I asleep just now?”

Dean closes his eyes. “Yeah, Sammy.”

He sends Ellen to bed, forces Sam to at least drink some water (no luck with actual food), watches him stare blearily at the TV until he falls asleep again. Then he slips outside, and sits on the front steps for what feels like another eternity before he scrolls through the contacts on his phone for Jane's number.

*

“I think you should tell him,” Ellen says over breakfast. “That someone’s coming, I mean. It’s probably not the best idea to surprise him.”

The statement seems redundant after the latest incident, but Dean gets it. If he was stupid enough to ignore the unspoken rule of _don’t touch Sam unless he can see it coming_ , maybe the obvious needs to be stated.

He sighs, rubs his face. The last two nights have been uncharacteristically quiet, but not in a good way; Sam still seems exhausted and drained in the wake of his – episode? Is that the word for it? Sounds too neutral to describe **_that_**  – and his body is apparently adamant on claiming all the sleep it can get.

 _Maybe it’s a healing sleep,_ Dean thinks, but that feels like a lie. _Really? Sleep? Sleep is gonna fix this? Come on._

He’s probably just being negative. It’s becoming increasingly hard to tell the difference between pessimism and just being realistic.

He nods. “I know. Change is a risk. Plus, we don’t know how he’s going to be when she gets here.” Sam might be perfectly fine if Jane catches him on one of his good hours; he might shake her hand and joke with her and offer to make her some tea. Or he might be sitting in the corner of the room, a hollow, unmoving, non-responsive version of himself that won’t even be aware of her presence. No way to predict it, no way of controlling it, diverting it when it comes.

“It’s definitely not going to be easy, but we got a week to figure it out,” Ellen says as she gets up, and in the morning light Dean can tell there’s some color in her face today. She needed her sleep, too; not having to chase Sam around the house at 3 a.m. because he’s trying to escape some nightmare probably helps. Hard to miss the way Ellen flinches when she bumps into the furniture or helps pull Sam away from the window, and Dean recognizes the shadows around her eyes, too. He’s seen that pinched look on his father’s face years ago, when an especially vicious some-monster-or-other did enough damage to keep John grounded for two months. Dean isn’t sure why he never asked for the details – maybe because Sammy was always around and he didn’t want to give him nightmares. Or maybe because he didn’t want to think about what made Dad look like that. Not back then.

Ellen drums her fingers on the table, thinking. “Didn’t he ask about your car the other day?”

“What? Oh, yeah, kind of.” They were sitting in front of the TV – feels strange sometimes, wasting his brother’s moments of coherence on that, but it’s an echo of their old routine that they both need, of their old downtime – when Sam squinted at some ridiculous car commercial and said he missed riding in the Impala.  

“Maybe you should take him out for a drive and try to talk to him then. You know, when he’s all there. Just don’t… maybe don’t drive too far.” _Because you never know when Sam will disappear into his mind again; because you never know if telling him the news about a stranger coming to see him might make him lose his shit; because what if he slumps forward in the passenger seat again, eyes dead and breathing shallow, back to the way he was when - -_

Dean clears his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I might actually try that.”

It takes him a few days, though. Sam’s hold on lucidity goes through its usual ebb and flow, and Dean can tell Ellen is watching him with growing concern as he repeatedly fails to make use of the better hours for the conversation they both know has to happen, and soon. But initiating anything that might, potentially, make his brother recede even further into himself is harder than he expected. This is not some backwoods cave or a dark house he can decide to just storm into and take his chances. This is Sam’s life he’s supposed to be gambling with.

But he does have to move, because Ellen was right: springing a surprise visitor on Sam is asking for trouble.

He’s studying his brother’s face as they sit in the living room. Sam is watching some nature show on TV – it’s always the TV these days, he hasn’t expressed any interest in reading, which Dean tries to pretend doesn’t freak him the fuck out – and he seems fine, honestly. Brow furrowed, same intense focus as back when he was five and watching his Saturday morning cartoons on some tiny motel TV screen. _Just say it. Move._

“Hey Sammy, you said you’ve been missing the Impala, right?”

Sam tears his eyes away from whatever rich and captivating drama is currently taking place in some anthill on the savanna. “What? Oh, yeah. Kind of. You know, it’s been a while.”

Even longer if you consider the fact that Sam apparently has no memory of the drive here, Dean realizes. Probably a good thing that he doesn’t.

“Then let’s you and I go for a drive. Just a couple miles down the road for a start, see how it goes. You in?”

Sam’s eyebrows knit together in something between confusion and disbelief. “Really?”

Dean can’t help but smile. “Yeah, really. I mean, if you’re up to it.”

“Oh, I’m up to it.” Sam is already on his feet, dropping the remote and scanning the room for his shoes. “Let’s go right now.”

“Man, wish I knew I could get you off the couch and outside this easy before. Would have come in handy when I was vacuuming last week.” They’ve been sharing the house chores, as much as Sam’s unpredictability allows, at least; it seems to be good for him. Which doesn’t mean Dean doesn’t still find himself occasionally cleaning around his brother like he’s a potted plant, when Sam is too far gone to know where he is or to move. They’ve been gingerly trying to joke about that, about all of it, but Dean’s stomach clenches as he says the words. _Not funny, never funny seeing Sam like that, no matter how much we try, it’s always heartbreaking and shitty and scary as fuck._

Sam smiles, though. Probably doesn’t remember what Dean is talking about, because how would he. “Shut up. Let’s go before you change your mind.”

They go. Sam seems fine as he slides into his usual seat in the Impala – no sudden flood of memories from that silent drive here; no blank stare. He opens and closes the glove compartment, fusses with the cooler in the back, complains about not being allowed any beer. It’s all for show; they both know Sam won’t be drinking for a while – no point in potentially complicating an already-precarious situation. But it wouldn’t be a normal drive without some bitching and moaning, and Sam knows this. Dean appreciates the effort.

He parks the car near what looks like an abandoned field, rolls down the window and eases back on the seat, watching his brother.

Sam is looking around, mainly seems curious. No hyperventilating, no sign that all this wide open space is too much for him after being indoors for so long. _Maybe it’s just the porch that throws him off balance,_ Dean thinks, and he wonders if maybe Sam does remember that unsteady walk out of the witch's cabin. The broken glass and the blood stains on the wood, the dead silence around them, like every living creature was holding its breath. The body in the garden.

_No, he didn’t see that, he wasn’t seeing anything. He wasn’t. He was gone._

Either way, Sam is very much present now, and Dean needs to focus, needs to tell him what’s coming. He gets a beer out of the cooler, opens it, takes a long swig. Looks away.

“So, how is it to be back out in the world? Is it everything you dreamed it would be?”

Sam chooses to ignore the lame attempt at banter. “It’s nice,” he says, then sighs. “Ellen is great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not - -  it’s kind of strange to be in that house all the time. How long have we been staying there?”

Dean shrugs. “I don’t know, a month or two, I think.” He doesn’t like to linger over questions of time with Sam; something about being faced with just how much he’s been absent tends to trigger him, cause more disconnects.

“Oh,” Sam says, and then he sits quietly for a long moment.

Dean is about to start rambling just to prevent him from going too deep into thought when Sam finally says, “I was sure - - I mean, it felt more like a week. Maybe ten days.”

Dean closes his eyes as he takes another drink because _a week? A goddamn week?_ Every time he thinks his brother is getting a better handle on reality, there’s some reminder of how much of it Sam really has been MIA for.

They can’t deal with that right now. “It’s okay,” he says, “doesn’t matter. It’s not like we’re on a schedule.”

Sam nods grimly. Says nothing.

Dean takes a breath. _Just get it out. Get it over with._

“Sammy, we’re gonna have someone over in a few days. Thought you should know in advance. Her name is Jane. She’s… she might be able to help you a little. Bobby says she’s good people.”

Sam doesn’t seem surprised, or worried. He’s watching a small, grey bird hop around in the grass a few feet away, distracted.

“Sam. You listening to me?”

“Yeah.” Sam sighs, looks down at his hands. Then back up at him. There’s no trace of the emptiness Dean was half-expecting to find in his eyes, just pain, just empathy. Sam being Sam.

“I’m okay with whoever you and Ellen want to have over, and I kind of knew, anyway. Sometimes I hear things when you think I’m out.” Sam sighs. “You don’t need to coddle me. I mean, I know I’m… I know things are bad, okay? And I know it’s been hard on you. I’ll talk to whoever you think might help.”

There’s a brief silence before Sam adds, “and you’re doing good, Dean. You are.” He tries to smile, and Dean bites the inside of his cheek, _don’t cry don’t you fucking tear up you’ll make him feel even shittier._

“Anyway,” Sam says, looking out through the window again, “just tell me again right before she gets here, okay? In case I - - in case I forget.”

Dean nods, speechless. He was expecting pushback, even if just the unintentional, subconscious kind; expecting Sam to either shut down instantly from sheer panic, or try to convince him that they didn’t need outside help. Sam being calm and coherent and taking things in stride is still rare enough that it’s a shock.

But it’s the best kind. Even the knowledge that Sam is agreeing to this because he’s trying to help Dean rather than himself, even the fact that his brother has apparently found a way to feel guilty for his own condition, can’t squash this relief. They’re okay, for now. They’re sitting in the Impala on the road, and he’s got a beer in his hand and the sun in his eyes, and Sam is by his side alive and aware and that’s enough for just this moment.

He tries to listen as his brother changes the subject, talking about Bobby and about maybe calling him later to check on him, to say thanks. Sam isn’t sure if he’s been grateful enough for the help since this shitstorm started, and he’s apparently decided to right that potential wrong ASAP, because next he’s talking about Ellen.

“She’s probably dead tired. Maybe I can cook you both dinner tonight, what do you think?”

“Sure, Sammy.” Dean makes a conscious effort to sound like he means it, like he’s up for it. Like he doesn’t know that Sam will be too exhausted and confused and dull-eyed by then, like he doesn’t know that even getting Sam to eat anything tonight will be a challenge.

Sam smiles again. He leans back, still talking about dinner, lets himself get comfortable in his old spot, and Dean feels himself relaxing, too. He’s actually nicely buzzed for a change, which hardly ever happens anymore. He doesn’t even think he’s had enough to be legally drunk, never mind Winchester drunk; but whatever brought this on, he’s all about not looking this particular gift horse in the mouth. He’s long overdue for some - - for some –

“Dean?”

He’s falling asleep. Sam’s voice is a far echo, a shore he needs to swim towards, but he’s warm and comfortable, and if he doesn’t move at all nothing hurts. The trouble is if he stops moving, he’ll sink. Just as a rule.

But he’s so damn tired.

He tries to keep his eyes open, a task which, at the moment, is way harder than it should be. _Tired. Just gimme five minutes, I need to stop for five minutes - -_

“Dean.” His brother sounds concerned, which is relatively unusual since the cabin. Sam hasn’t really seemed able to worry about anyone or anything for a while now, at least not for more than a minute; another thing the witch took away from him. Probably hard to keep track of other people’s problems when it’s a struggle to even know where you are.

 _But he sounds worried now_. Dean forces himself to sit up, blinks owlishly at a ray of sun coming through the dusty windshield. _We should definitely wash the car when we get back._

 _“_ Yeah,” he slurs, “sorry, I’m, uh. Jus’ tired, man. Let’s- - let’s just sit here for a minute, okay?”

Sam doesn’t say anything, just reaches over to gently pluck the beer out of his lax grip before Dean spills it. Puts it down in the footwell.

“Thanks.” He should say something else, something like _you good, Sammy?_ But he can’t. His eyes close on their own and he is so tired of the fight to keep them open, _just five minutes, okay, maybe - -_

Later he’ll wonder how he sank so fast and so deep, because usually he’ll jump awake at the sound of a fucking mouse skittering across the floor at 4 a.m. and with half a bottle of Jack in him, but he somehow misses his 6' 5 brother opening the car door and stumbling out, then walking away.   

***

The thing that first gets her attention is the way the guy is moving. The park is pretty empty – still too cold, even though today has been surprisingly sunny – and so the man is hard to miss. He seems to drift across the grass aimlessly, like he hasn’t really decided on a destination or even a path. _Probably high, or a little too drunk for his own good_ , she thinks.

He’s broad-shouldered but thin, his face pale, and as he comes closer Kate’s first instinct is to get up and step into the shadow of a nearby tree, so that he doesn’t spot her. Instead she settles for just watching – he hasn’t given her reason to be afraid of him, but she’s not looking to start any conversations.

The man comes to a tentative halt next to a big rock and stands there for a while, seemingly thinking, then decides to sit down on the hard surface; he stares into the distance for a minute before his head drops, chin almost touching his chest. He doesn’t move after that, and Kate shrugs and turns back to her book.

She gets a solid twenty minutes of uninterrupted reading before there’s the nudge of a cold, wet nose at her elbow, and she flinches. “Oliver, ew, come on.”

The beagle is panting happily, tail wagging and fur muddy. As tiny as this park is, their weekly excursions to it seem to be his idea of going to Disneyland. She huffs out a laugh at the mental image of Ollie in a spinning teacup, and scratches behind the puppy’s floppy ears.

“You wanna lie down and rest for a while? Nice and quiet over here.” She pats lightly on the ground, but Oliver’s attention is elsewhere; he’s off and running before she can grab him, heading straight for the rock where Slightly-Weird-Guy is still sitting motionless. There’s no response as the dog paws excitedly at his shoes and barks up at him.

Kate scrambles to get up. “Shit. Ollie! Get back here!”

Oliver only barks louder, sounding almost distressed now. _Okay, okay._

She approaches the still figure perched on the rock, smiling apologetically. “Sorry, is he bothering you?”

The man blinks up at her through strands of brown hair that cast a shadow over his eyes.

“Huh?”

“My dog, he does that sometimes. He’s just being friendly. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” the guy says, looking down like he isn’t sure what she’s talking about. He seems to perk up at the sight of Oliver sniffing at his feet, tail still wagging vigorously. “I like dogs, I think.”

She watches his face for a moment. “Jury still out on that?”

He doesn’t smile, biting his lip and avoiding her eyes. “No,” he says, and then, after a pause, “I’m - - I’m Sam.” He says it like he’s trying to reassure himself of something, and she resists the urge to take a step back from whatever it is that’s apparently going on with the guy, opting instead for a nod. “Hey, Sam. My name’s Kate. And this beast here is Oliver.”

Sam reaches down to pet the beagle’s round head, and much to Kate’s surprise, Ollie stretches himself on his short hind legs to try and climb the stranger. “He really likes you,” she says, “I think he wants you to pick him up.”

Sam scoops up the little dog, placing it on the rock next to him and studying it like he’s examining an alien life form.

“He’s pretty funny,” he offers after some thought.

Kate laughs. “Yeah, he is. You should see him around meal times, though. Hound of the Baskervilles ain’t got nothing on him.”

Sam blinks.

She feels like an ass. “Oh, um, it’s from Sherlock Holmes?” Maybe he isn’t big on reading, though she would have pegged him for a bookworm. “You know, monster dog that hunts people down and rips - “

The look in Sam’s eyes stops her in her tracks.

“You okay?”

Sam’s face has drained of color completely, and his gaze seems somehow different now, though she can’t tell why.

“Yeah,” he says, “D - Dean. I need to find Dean. I don’t, I can’t remember what happened, he - - “

Kate is about to ask who Dean is when Sam’s head slumps, his eyelids fluttering.

“Whoa, hey,” she says, alarmed, “Um, Sam? What’s wrong?”

But he’s suddenly beyond words, breathing hard, his hands trying to dig into the rough surface of the rock, and before she knows what to do he’s sliding down to the ground, crumpling forward in a heap. It all happens so fast she can’t even wrap her mind around it.

There are voices behind her, people who seem to have noticed the strange scene and ran over to help, and she watches mutely as someone crouches by Sam to shake his shoulder, as they carefully turn him over and try to coax some kind of response out of him and get nothing. She tells them she doesn’t know anything about the guy, just that his name is Sam and that he seemed confused. She picks Oliver up because he keeps nuzzling at Sam’s fingers and barking, high pitched and alarmed, and as she walks away with the puppy in her arms she tells herself it’s okay, _it’s okay, nothing you can do about this._

She wonders if the ambulance that whizzes past her a few minutes later on the main road, lights and siren on, is for him. Decides she doesn’t want to know. Oliver whines in her tight grip and she puts him back down on the pavement, suddenly realizing she’s left her book in the park.

She pulls on the leash when the dog turns to look back to where they came from.

“Home, Ollie.”

***

It’s like he materializes back into existence mid-step, although he knows that can’t be true because, well, because. He must have been walking a while, though he isn’t sure how long. Or where it is he’s going. Last thing he remembers is Dean’s face. They were in the Impala, though the car wasn’t running, and he watched his brother’s blinks turn long and slow, like he was losing the battle for consciousness. He can’t remember why; or why he wasn’t scared, why he wasn’t trying to do something. All he knows is after Dean’s eyes closed and didn’t open again, he left, he had to go. Do - - something.

He’s somewhere with lots of grass, and the sun is in his eyes again, too bright even though he’s cold. Probably better not to think about that (ice crystals spreading over a windowpane in a dark Detroit apartment, Lucifer’s finger trailing a mocking pattern on the frozen surface, _actually, I burn cold_ ) _._

He keeps walking, and he must have lost time again because next he finds himself sitting on something hard (a bench? A rock), his legs aching. There’s a young woman talking to him, a dog barking, a world still there demanding answers that he isn’t sure are his to give. But he tries. For a moment he seems to do okay, things feel almost normal, he thinks maybe he’s smiling because the woman – did she tell him her name? – is smiling at him. But then she mentions hellhounds, he’s pretty sure she does, and everything cracks around him again. Time shifts and shuffles like a deck of cards past present future wait wait - - 

Dean, he was going for help, he needs to wake Dean up. Dad’s face sealed and determined _I’ll be back in two weeks, Dean’s in charge, you listen to him._ Dean tying his shoelaces for him before school _Sammy if something happens call this number, get an adult, tell them you’re John’s kid, but nothing’s gonna happen okay you’re safe we’re safe._ But Dean died so many times, and he might be dead again or he might just be asleep and dad is gone and they’re all grown up and there’s no number to call - -

His head is buzzing and he feels himself sinking, feels his body sliding off whatever it is he’s sitting on and his knees hitting the ground, maybe this time he’ll go right through and back to where he belongs.

Hands lifting his head up from the grass, cradling his face, cool and impossibly steady against his burning skin. A distant comfort. He leans into the touch. _Cas - -_

A voice he doesn’t recognize. “Hey, hey. Open your eyes, buddy.”

Not Cas. The tears come without warning, a dam he’s been refusing to tend to is crumbling to dust because _he’s never coming back, he’s dead he’s dead not off to war, not missing, Cas is dead._ Grief leaks warm and aching from under his closed eyelids and down his face and someone, _not Cas never Cas_ is gently wiping it away, someone says, “he’s crying.”

They sound like they’re sorry. Maybe they don’t know. They wouldn’t try to help if they knew. The cemetery, the snap of his fingers, a rain of blood where the angel stood. The give of his brother’s shattered eye socket under his knuckles, his fists beating Dean to a pulp against the side of the Impala _Sammy I’m here I’m not gonna leave you._ The snap of bone and Lucifer pulling his arm back for that final blow as he watches from inside his body _Dean came to say goodbye and this is what he gets - -_

He thinks his heart might be trying to stop, because his chest hurts and there’s no more air and he hopes that it’s true, he hopes it’ll all be over soon, even though he knows he won’t get any rest. _We never get to sleep here we have to keep going because, because - -_

Darkness.

***

The sound that tears Dean out of sleep is so sudden and violently shrill inside the car that his first instinct is to go for his gun. But it’s just his cell phone rattling away on the dashboard, and he fumbles for it, suddenly aware that the light coming in through the windshield is different, _shit, I fell asleep, how long - -_

The realization that Sam isn’t in the car with him hits him like a bucket of ice water just as he swipes across the screen to answer the call, and for a second or two he’s mute with terror.

“...Hello?”

The voice on the other end sounds young, hesitant. Not Sammy. “Is this... I’m looking for a Mr. Dean Frehley.”

Been a while since he’s used that alias. He tries not to drop the phone as he scrambles out of the car, spinning around desperately in the gravel, _maybe Sam just needed to stretch his legs a little, maybe he’s still here - -_ “yeah, that’s me. Who’s this?”

No sign of Sam, just miles of fields and trees and asphalt and _oh shit, SHIT, where would he have gone, think. Maybe he went back to Ellen’s. No, she would have called._

“This is Terry at County Hospital. We found your number on a note in a patient's pocket. Says to call you in case of - - sir, are you a relative? First name's Sam.”

Dean’s mouth goes dry.

“Yeah,” he croaks. “Brother. What’s... is he...“

“He’s here under observation,” the woman says, “he’s physically stable. He was brought in after an... incident. They need you to, um... are you able to come talk to his doctors?”

She sounds like she’s been working there for all of two days. Dean closes his eyes, nods before he remembers she can’t see him. _Wake up._ “Yeah, on my way.”

He tries to drive at semi-normal speed, ignores the urge to punch the steering wheel, _how could you be so stupid. Who the fuck knows what Sam’s gotten himself into, what happened to him while you were just..._

Bobby, he needs to tell Bobby. And Ellen. They’re gonna tear him a new one, and with good reason. Dad would have.

He tastes blood as he pulls up next to the ER, realizes he’s been chewing on his bottom lip. Good. _Good_.

*

Seems like it’s an especially bad day emergency-wise, or maybe the place is just understaffed, because Sam is still wearing his own clothes rather than standard issue hospital garb when Dean first sees him. Somehow that makes it a tiny bit better, like Sam still isn’t really a patient, like things can still be reversed.

Like he didn’t fuck up.

Sam looks sick though, looks lost in a way that the familiarity of his old blue shirt and jeans can’t make up for. He’s lying on his side in one of the beds at the far end of the room, and even though he’s facing the main entrance he doesn’t see Dean coming, not until Dean is right in his face.

“Sammy, hey. Sam.”

A long moment of nothing at all, and then Sam blinks, eyes clearing.

“Hey.” He’s visibly relieved for half a second, managing something that resembles a smile before his gaze shifts, turning away and inward. “Sorry.”

 _He’s embarrassed._ Dean tries to smile back through the ache of that thought. Easier to do when Sam knows who he is. “It’s okay. Kinda my fault. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I just... it sort of snuck up on me.” Sam knows – or used to know, sometimes knows – that he’s been chronically sleep-deprived since Hell _(since Alastair)_ , but Dean doubts that his brother is aware of how much worse it’s been recently. At least he'd like to think so. He takes a deep breath, _God these places always smell the same no matter where you go_.

“What happened? Any idea how you ended up here?”

Another question he wouldn’t have thought to ask Sam a few months ago. They can pretend all they want, but neither of them is really used to it yet; the way Sam is always missing bits and pieces of information, of his own reality, sometimes full days gone. So many things he needs to be told, still – ranging from what they had for breakfast to what year it is or what he’s said and done just hours earlier. One heartbreaking morning he had to be told about John, and that sure was a day Dean would love to erase from his own memory. Maybe there _is_ no getting used to it, maybe there shouldn’t be.

Sam closes his eyes, but opens them right away like he’s afraid he’ll slip back under. There are grass stains on the knees of his jeans, traces of dirt on his neck.

“Um, not sure,” he says, looking down at his hands fisting in the hospital blanket. “I think I just… I remember looking for you. Or maybe I was looking for help. Maybe I thought you were in trouble? It all kind of blurs together. There was a dog. And people, someone kept...“ he tugs distractedly at his shirt collar, and Dean can see the edge of a faint, vertical bruise that’s just beginning to form on his chest. _Sternal rub, how unresponsive was he if they did_ **_that_ ** _to him, if they needed to test his pain reflexes just to make sure he was conscious. What the hell, Sammy._

“When did you...“

Sam smiles weakly. “Wake up? Don’t know. I remember the ambulance, a little, and being wheeled in here – I mean, I remember the lights in the ceiling – and I guess that’s when things started to track again. Sort of.” 

“Mr. Frehley?”

They both flinch at the voice. A doctor, not much older than Sam, and a nurse who seems so utterly miserable to be there that Dean is instantly less sure he trusts the staff to touch his brother at all.

“Glad to see you’re back with us,” the man says, pulling up a stool and sitting down next to the bed with a barely-audible sigh. He nods at Sam’s baffled expression.

“Guess you don’t remember. We had a talk when they brought you in. Kind of one-sided, though – it seemed like you weren’t quite... here, yet.”

Sam moves uneasily, flushes bright red. “Oh.”

Dean is suddenly filled with affection. _Sammy, you dork, it’s okay_. It’s times like these, when his brother is painfully self-conscious about shit he can’t control, that he remembers all of Sam is still in there.

Sam keeps his eyes on the blanket, his fingers pulling nervously on a loose thread. “I was here. I just couldn’t... I couldn’t talk.”

The doctor nods. “Yeah. Why is that?”

“I don’t, um. I don’t know.”

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, the man seems to realize he won’t be getting a satisfactory explanation. He leafs through Sam’s chart. “Let’s do some blood tests. See how you’re doing. That okay with you?”

Sam nods, searches for Dean’s eyes as the nurse rolls up his sleeve. She frowns.

“How’d you get these?”

Sam looks down at his arm like it’s someone else’s. “Huh?”

The nurse shoots her colleague a quick look, then focuses her attention back on Sam. “They look recent.”

Sam’s eyes are blank as he studies the purple ribbons of scar tissue coiling across the pale skin, forearm to elbow.

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” The nurse’s voice is flat, somewhat annoyed, and Dean feels his lips pull back against his teeth, his skin tingling. _Calm down,_ he thinks, _she doesn’t know. Can’t know_.

He closes his eyes, breathes in before he says, “Sam doesn’t always remember. He was... he wasn’t himself when this happened.”

The doctor looks up just as Sam’s eyes go dull, his face slackening; gone again. Injuries are always a risky topic of conversation, since Lucifer.

“What exactly _did_ happen? It looks like you – ” the guy seems to realize he’s talking to himself, turns to Dean. “Looks like he went nine rounds with Edward Scissorhands.”

The words _will you just leave it the fuck alone_ are burning on Dean’s tongue, but he smiles tersely. Wouldn't do Sam any good to antagonize the medical staff now.

“Yeah, it was bad. He was pretty out of it, and he walked right into a glass door and sort of went down. Most of these are from when he was trying to get back up on his feet – I couldn’t get through to him long enough to keep him still.”

Dean doesn’t miss the quick exchange of glances. The doctor takes Sam’s unresisting hand, turns it, studies the vicious, raised scar across the inside of his palm. At least that one makes the story somewhat believable. It never did heal right, not with Sam always picking at it to try and ground himself. Doesn't look as old as it should.

Telling them about the night Sam wandered into Ellen’s kitchen in his sleep (God, he hopes it was in his sleep) and went to town on his arm with a paring knife is not an option. Dean can still smell the blood, metallic and suffocating in the stale air, can still see dark red pooling on the linoleum, hear the dull thud of his knees meeting the floor when he suddenly couldn’t stand because _meat over bone just slice right down until you hit the rack, don’t cry, Dean-o, better them than you wouldn’t you say, I think you would I think you did._

He stitched Sam up at the kitchen table and reminded him over and over again that they were out of local anesthesia, _okay Sammy, okay, not being punished, you’re up here with us_ , though Sam didn’t seem to hear him. Or know that the arm bleeding on the folded towel was his, for that matter. Ellen didn’t say a word, her mouth a thin tight line as she held Sam’s other hand while Dean worked, and long after he finished. He knew she would have held his, too, if she thought he’d let her.

Sam never asked where all the knives went after that, or why they stopped eating their meals in the kitchen; didn’t seem to remember. He did start wandering over there during dinner after a while, though, the plate held loosely in his hand, sometimes sitting down at the table and blinking like he was trying to remember what he was looking for. Which is what eventually made them give up on the living room and go back to the way things had been before. Minus the knives.

The doctor is studying Sam’s face again. “What do you mean when you say he was ‘pretty out of it’?”

Dean can actually tell the truth about that, just not the exact reason. “Sam has - - he’s been through some nasty stuff recently, and he hasn’t really come back from it yet. He’s getting better, but there are still times when he just… he just checks out.”

The doctor tilts his head and Dean thinks _this is intriguing to him, like a puzzle._ The notion makes him move uneasily where he stands, _rage won’t help here, shut it down_. He’s clenching and unclenching his fist around the coarse fabric of Sam’s coat that he’s been holding since he found it folded on the edge of the hospital bed. Two of the buttons have fallen off, leaving scars of frayed string, third one’s on its way. They probably took it off him in the ambulance.

“Does Sam remember any of it later? Things that happen when he’s not all there?”

Dean clears his throat, looks away. “No. Not usually. Maybe bits and pieces, sometimes.”

“And was there any physical trauma during whatever it was that happened to him to cause this… condition? Do you know?”

There’s a small, faded stain that was once red on the bed sheet, Dean notes to himself, washed and bleached over and over but still there if you really look. He wonders if the person it belonged to is still alive. No reason to assume they’re not.

“I don’t know for sure,” he says, and his voice sounds wrong, or maybe it’s the words. Definitely the words. “I wasn’t with him.”

_Give them something, tell them some version of the truth, Sam needs this to be over. Just say..._

“He was carjacked. They dumped him a few miles away, and it took a while before he was found.” The lie comes easier than it should. “We don’t exactly know what happened. He didn’t have any visible injuries, but he wouldn’t talk about it. And he hates hospitals, so we didn’t go. I guess it’s possible that he got hurt worse than we knew.”

There’s a long silence after that, and although he doesn’t look up, Dean knows both doctor and nurse are studying Sam’s face, re-evaluating. He doesn’t want to see their expressions, the kind he remembers all too well from when he and Sam were kids and school was a never-ending, pointless exercise in introductions. They were always new, always expected to answer loaded questions. Didn’t take long for him to learn that saying your mother is an accountant or a stay-at-home mom is easier than saying she’s dead. He got angry at Sammy so many times for failing to lie as believably as he did.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the doctor says, catching him off guard.

“Huh?”

“Sorry to hear about what happened to your brother. It does sound pretty nasty. Was he showing any signs of… well, I was going to ask if he was disoriented when you found him. But I guess that wouldn’t tell us much about head trauma, given his condition.” The guy rubs his forehead like he’s nursing a major headache, and Dean wonders how long he’s been up. _You and me both, buddy._ _Except for today, that is. Except for when I was asleep while Sam was out getting lost._

”Was he throwing up, right after? Having trouble with light?”

Dean shakes his head. “Nothing like that. I’ve seen him concussed before, it didn’t...“

“So he’s had more than one concussion?” The doctor sounds alert now, enough that Dean does look all the way up.

“Yeah. He... he got knocked out a bunch of times over the years, um… playing football, and a few other times. We’re on the road a lot, sometimes you get into situations you don’t want to be in.” That’s half true, at least. Sam never had the time or the inclination to play football, not that Dad would have let him back when he could. Going into battle injured wasn’t worth the illusion of normalcy.

They both watch as the nurse puts the vials of blood away and wraps an inflatable cuff around Sam’s other arm to take his blood pressure. Sam doesn’t seem to notice, staring at the medical supply cart, his eyes wide and empty.

The nurse shakes her head. “BP and pulse are fine,” she says, then lowers her voice. “He’s totally non-responsive. Psych consult?” 

The doctor taps his pen against Sam’s chart. “No question, but we still need to check for the usual. We’ll know more after we get his labs back. And I'm definitely ordering a scan. Won’t help much with ruling out CTE, but we need to know if there’s maybe something else we’re dealing with.”

Dean feels himself deflate at the words. Not thinking about the effects of repetitive head injury is pretty much an unspoken Winchester family rule, because it’s not like they can avoid that shit, anyway. But it’s been on his mind the last couple of years; another bonus of pushing forty when you were always expecting to die in your twenties. That _invincible me_ crap is long gone. He sometimes wonders if Sam feels the same way, but he doesn’t ask.

“Okay,” he says, and reaches out to gently roll down Sam’s sleeve over the scars; watches his brother’s eyes for a glint of awareness, finds none. “Let me try to bring him back first, okay? It’s better if he doesn’t go through the whole thing like this. Might make him stay under longer.”

The doctor nods, looking somewhat unsettled. “Yeah, it should take a while before we can get him in there, anyway. You...” He glances at the motionless man, then at Dean. “You know how to snap him out of it?”

Dean sighs. “He doesn’t really ‘snap out of it’. It helps a little if I nag at him, that’s all.”

The doctor is watching two orderlies bring another patient in, already distracted. _He gets to walk away from this_ , Dean thinks, and the instant wave of guilt hits him like nausea.

The nurse angles a look at Sam. “Easier for him to drift when there’s nothing demanding his attention, huh?”

“Something like that.” Dean does his best to smile at them as they leave, then draws the curtain next to the bed to give Sam some semblance of privacy. Not that Sam would be able to tell the difference, right now. 

He pulls up a chair, sits down heavily, unsure why everything hurts. He’s so tired, maybe that’s it, just the constant exhaustion. And his shoulder that hasn’t really healed properly since the cabin, since he’s been carrying Sam. Whatever part of Sam that’s been sleeping all this time, locked away.

He sighs, places a hand flat on his brother’s chest.

“Sammy,” he begins.

*

“How long was I out?”

Sam is finally coherent again, which means he has to catch up, ground himself back in reality. Never easy to watch. It’s quick this time; Dean doesn’t get to answer before he sees the realization hit. Sam looks around, and his face instantly floods with pain, with shame, with everything Dean wishes he could rid him of every time he comes back like this.  

“Shit, are we in a - - oh.”  Sam closes his eyes like taking one sense out of the equation might make it easier to stay focused, another habit he’s picked up that makes Dean’s stomach clench. His brother survived an eternity in Lucifer’s light and now hospital neons are too much for him, and the unfairness of it all hurts the same every time.

He sighs. “Yeah. You remember what happened?”

Sam nods, winces a little. “Ow.”

“What?”

“Your hand. Why does it hurt.” He sounds tired and confused, and Dean isn’t about to tell him it’s because of that bruise blooming on his chest. Not right now, not if he doesn’t remember.

He moves his hand up to Sam’s shoulder, ignores the question. “Hey, did you catch what Doctor Douche was saying before?” He remembers what Sam said in the car about some things registering even while he's out, doesn’t want to assume. “About the MRI?”

Sam opens his eyes, looks up at him blankly.

“MRI?”

 _Great._ “Yeah. They’ll be sending someone to get you over there soon. Guess they wanna look inside that giant head of yours. Don’t know why they would, probably nothing in there except for an episode of _Doctor Who_ playing on repeat.”

Sam smiles weakly. “No nerd jokes today.”

“I did not agree to that.”

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

They sit in silence for a while, Dean texting Bobby and Ellen, Sam staring out into the hall. They’ve both been in hospitals enough to know the art of the nothing-conversation, but small talk feels impossible now.

The orderly that eventually comes to get Sam is obscenely energetic, making jokes about hospital rush hour traffic as he wheels Sam to radiology, seemingly unfazed by his less-than-cooperative audience. Dean would find all that aggressive cheer annoying if he wasn’t focused on Sam’s face, which is growing paler by the second. _Is he scared? He can’t be scared. Shit, he is._

“Okay, here we are,” the orderly says, patting Sam on the back with an amount of force that probably isn’t wise considering _it’s a freaking hospital, you know, where people go when they’re_ **_hurt_** _._ “Time to stand up.”  
  
Dean keeps his mouth shut, keeps his hands to himself after Sam shoots him an unmistakable _back off_ glare when he tries to help him up. His brother has probably had more than his share of people manhandling him for one day. For a lifetime.

“I’ll be right outside,” he says. Sam nods distractedly, eyes on a tech who gestures towards the MRI room. “Yeah. Okay.”

Dean watches as Sam gets himself awkwardly out of the too-small wheelchair and shuffles away, watches the door close behind him before he forces himself to sit down. _Just an MRI, this is not open heart surgery for fuck’s sake, calm down. Sam will be_ **_fine_** _._

Except he knows better.

 

***

_**Next chapter: Unfortunately, I think we all know Sam is headed for trouble.** _


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **• Specific TRIGGER warning for this chapter: a past self-injury incident mentioned in the previous chapter will be addressed from Sam’s POV. Once more, please skip those paragraphs if this is a sensitive subject for you.**
> 
> **I honestly wasn’t planning on including self-harm at all when I first started writing this fic, and I still intend to avoid it altogether in future chapters if I can, but occasionally the story kind of… goes its own way.**
> 
> **• I'm not 100% happy with this chapter, but honestly, the way things are progressing for me in off-line world, I feel like it's better to post when I can.**
> 
> **• For general warnings and disclaimer, see chapter 1.**

 ***

The first thing he’s conscious for after the park is the ambulance. There are hands on him again, fingers pressed against his face; someone is forcing his eyes open and shining a light into them, so bright it feels like it’s piercing through his brain and bouncing off the back of his skull.

Voices, too. “Sam. Sam! Can you hear me?”

_No stop can’t, can’t - -_

Breathing is too hard and he’s slowing down, fading away, knows he’s supposed to inhale but suddenly it’s too much effort. He doesn’t have it in him to struggle, doesn’t remember why he would.

A sharp crack next to his ear that feels like an electric shock. He thinks someone might have slapped him, but why would they --

“Sam! Stay with us here, take a breath. Okay, good -- in and out, just like that. Stay awake.”

His eyes refuse to focus; he distantly hears himself sigh as they slide closed on their own. Another wave of pain; this time it’s something dragging against his chest. Aching pressure, more words flying around him, at him. He doesn’t move. _This is just another one of his tricks. Just lie there and don’t let it get to you, only flesh, it’s all just flesh and cartilage and bone for Lucifer to take apart and put back together and none of it matters - -_

But his eyes open, they must have because now he’s seeing blurred shapes moving, too much light. Distantly, a part of him that is watching from the sidelines wonders again why there’s always too much light, no matter where he goes.

“Sam, hey, hey. Talk to me. Does anything hurt?”

How do they know his name?

He doesn’t respond, couldn’t if he wanted to because he doesn’t feel his mouth, doesn’t remember how it works. He’s floating. His gaze wanders over to a blur of bright yellow; handles. Never occurred to him how many grab handles there need to be inside an ambulance. Makes sense, with all the - -

Why is he in an ambulance?

They’re turning his head towards the light. He can’t fight them. His focus shifts; there’s a face looming over him, the eyes brown and calm despite the urgency of the words, _he’s tachy at 125, airway’s clear, still not communicating - -_

He blinks up at the light, at the movement around him, above him. Is he on the floor?

“You’re okay. Keep your eyes on me. I’m gonna ask you a few questions, okay? Sam, how old are you?”

He doesn’t know. Doesn’t want to know. You can’t count down here, no point in keeping track.

“No?” A hand in his hair, feeling around his scalp, quick and efficient. “That’s okay, man, don’t worry about it. Can you tell me what day it is? You remember that?”

He’s so tired. Something just happened, he’s almost positive something really bad just went down and he can’t concentrate because he needs to forget - - no, he needs to remember, there’s - -

“Come on, work with me here. Hey,” something that was pressed against the side of his wrist slides up to wrap itself around his palm. Fingers. Just fingers, just human fingers. His mind sinks nonetheless. “Can you squeeze my hand? You can do that for me, right?”

 _Hand_. _Squeeze my hand_. He tries to cooperate this time, tries to remember what all the words mean. What he’s supposed to do. Comes up empty. He must still have a body, but he’s not entirely sure that, if he were to look down, he’d see anything but gaping space where his torso and legs should be.

“Come on, let me know you’re in there, okay?”

He tries to obey, tries to move his fingers, though he has no idea if he’s doing anything at all. Everything feels numb, unreal, too far away to matter.

But the face above him lights up. “Good, that’s good. Keep your eyes open, now.” The world suddenly tilts; he’s being jostled, maybe. They’re struggling with something, _wait no_ _pull on the other sleeve first, yeah, okay_. Then the grip on his hand is back. “Let’s do this one more time, Sam. Squeeze my hand again.”

Coat. They took his coat off. He needs it back, it’s always cold down here, and it’s all he has from home, from - - from -

He was looking for help. Help for Dean. He left Dean alone again. His mind curls around the thought like a fist around a piece of broken glass. _What did you do_?

He doesn’t feel his eyes drift away from the paramedic’s face, his hand going lax in the man’s grip. All he knows is that he’s sinking, because the world goes flat and dark and echoey again, and the numbness is a relief that he hasn’t earned, that he’s not allowed to take. He tries to claw his way back up to consciousness to tell them that; to tell them to go get Dean, before someone (something) else does, before it’s too late. But the world slips away from him and for a while, he knows nothing and misses no one.

*

Reality almost never filters in mercifully when he comes back from one of his disconnects; it’s always brutally loud and bright, too tactile and immediate, flooding all his senses. Ellen once told him that he takes a while to truly wake up whenever he comes back, but nothing about it feels gradual to him -- he’s away one moment and here the next, struggling to fill in the blanks, to find his footing in a world that he wasn’t aware he’d fallen away from.

So it’s nothing new when fading back into awareness hurts, but it’s worse this time. Because he doesn’t come back to Ellen’s living room, or to Dean butchering one of his favorite rock anthems in the driver's seat of the Impala. He wakes up to hospital smells and to grey ceiling tiles moving above him as he’s carted through strange hallways; to sounds of pain that he’s almost sure someone else is making, and so they distress him, _someone’s in trouble something’s wrong gun where’s my gun_ \-- 

“He’s groggy, barely responding to verbal stimuli, actually went completely non-responsive on us for a while. There’s some delayed reaction to pain, too.” The voice is familiar, that’s the same one that kept nagging at him in the ambulance. Except now it sounds tired, more detached; talking to someone else he can’t see. About him.       

“I’m not sure what we’re dealing with here. Vitals are good -- he’s a bit tachy, but that could be anxiety. Kept his eyes open most of the ride here; no LOC, though he did come close a couple times. People who saw him go down said he didn’t hit his head, for whatever that’s worth, and we didn’t find any injuries that we could see. Something’s seriously wrong, though. I mean, obviously. The guy’s practically catatonic.”

There’s more talk and movement that he’s too tired to follow. The sounds of anguish die down behind him, replaced by soft, tearful-sounding moans -- ER, this is an ER, probably another patient in pain, not Adam crawling on the blood-slick floor looking for his eyes, grabbing for Sam to help him find them, not the Cage -- and he drifts again. He wants so badly to sleep.

A tap on his shoulder makes him realize someone’s talking to him, has _been_ talking to him for a while. He tries to focus again.

“--am? You with us? Sam.”

Fingers pulling on his eyelids again, that light again. Strange how he keeps forgetting this one rule: no rest, ever. He’s not allowed. And anyway, wasn’t there something -- was he supposed to take care of something - -

He only knows he’s lost more time because the next thing he sees is Dean’s face staring at him, pale and weary under the harsh ceiling lights, red staining the corner of his mouth. That trace of blood is what pulls him the rest of the way up and into full consciousness, into the pain that comes with it. He can’t hold on to the meaning of his worry long enough to ask Dean why he’s bleeding -- there’s too much to remember all at once -- but the pained look on his brother’s face keeps him afloat, keeps him communicating. For a while.

He does his best to remain present when a doctor and a nurse come in; tries not to leave Dean again. He fights to maintain eye contact (was it always this hard?), answers questions dutifully, though there are too many things he doesn’t know; too many blanks he can’t help fill.

He isn’t sure why the nurse is looking at him like that. She’s rolling up his sleeve and then she stops, lifts her gaze to study his face like she suddenly knows something about him that she wasn’t expecting to learn.

He follows her eyes back down when she asks him about the scars, and that’s when he sees them, and they must have been there all along but he can’t remember ever running his fingers across the curved, angry lines; doesn’t remember seeing them on his bare skin in the shower; doesn’t remember the pain of healing, though now that he knows they’re there he can sense a faint itch, the kind that he’s learned to associate with long-healing wounds -- the kind that tells him the cuts ran deep. That they were bad.

The nurse is right, they look fresh. He can still see where the stitches used to be. He doesn’t remember being stitched.

_When - -_

He means to ask Dean, but the words catch in his throat because as he looks at his brother, he can tell. It was Dean who fixed him, Dean who had to take care of it, and he wants to cry. But more than that he wants to know, needs to know. Tries to think.

 _Kitchen. His bare feet on the linoleum, Lucifer’s voice soft and infinitely patient in his ear. No, not in his ear exactly; he didn’t hear it as much as he felt it, somewhere in the back of his mind, a steel door opening just enough for something dark and scaly and venomous to slide out and into his consciousness._ Sammy Boy, I’m going to give you a choice here, only because I like you. _Dean’s face, Lucifer wore Dean’s face that time and he knew it wasn’t his brother, that Dean was somewhere outside the Cage trying to live the life Sam had made him promise to struggle through, he knew that. But he wasn’t so sure anymore because Dean looked so real, standing there holding the carving knife and waiting for him to decide._ Sammy, I’m sorry, he - - he told me - -  he says either I take you apart this time or you do it yourself, _and he can’t make his brother do it and he reaches out and takes the knife and goes to work, starts with his left arm._

His mind protests, shrinks away from the unspooling memory all too late; the world recedes. The nurse and the doctor’s faces somehow grow farther apart in an expanding space, moving away even though they’re right there. Or maybe he’s the one who’s moving. Floating again. Something is wrong. He can’t see Dean anymore because the edges of his vision are going grey; can’t feel his own arms even when he looks back down at them, strange appendages made of bone and muscle and skin, and then the rest of him is gone, too.

When he swims back up (is dragged back up) to the surface, only Dean is there. Talking about… something. It takes him forever to make sense of his brother’s words, to understand where he is. Lucidity feels even worse than before, not just because he realizes all over again that he’s in the hospital, but because he’s overcome by the feeling that he did something wrong; knows he’s guilty, but can’t remember of what.

Dean doesn’t seem to share his impression. He looks troubled, but not accusing as he asks more questions that Sam should have the answers to, and Sam does his best again and it’s not enough, nowhere near enough. The last few hours are hopelessly scattered puzzle pieces that he can’t seem to put together, and moreover, something in him seems resistant to the notion of even trying. Not for the first time, he wonders about what part of him is so desperate to forget. What keeps pulling him under, keeps his lights out.

He struggles to ignore the itch in the back of his mind. He’s never been good at that, unlike Dean (and who is he kidding, it’s not like Dean’s methods have been working for him lately, either), but he tries. Has to. He talks to his brother, even manages what he thinks is a faint smile, although it feels like he’s operating his face by remote control, everything still too far away and disconnected from him.

They both fall silent after a while, too tired to keep the pretense of calm going. They wait. He forgets what they’re waiting for. By the time an orderly comes to take him away, he’s terrified, though he isn’t sure why.

What else is new.

*

The MRI room is small and it smells of disinfectant and, unexpectedly, of coffee. _This is just a job to someone, a place they go to everyday and bring in their latte after lunch break, not a space where disasters are catalogued, where lives are unraveling._ He forces himself to breathe in, breathe out. Tries to prepare for how impossibly small the space inside the machine will inevitably be, reminds himself that he can get out, that it will all be over within a time that can be measured in minutes. Not hours, not days, not years.

As he studies the ( _stretcher coffin slab_ ) sliding surface he’s supposed to lie on, he decides that closing his eyes is the best way to go. He must have had an MRI done in the past -- he thinks they ran every possible test on him back when the Impala got T-boned, vaguely remembers medical distractions while he was trying to get to Dean, to Dad -- but that was before the Cage. Before he learned about being buried, centuries of crushing darkness rotting around him as he tried to move, tried to scream through the dirt in his throat and the jagged bone fragments that were once his jaw, gave up. Lucifer dragged him out soon after that, when he was starting to fade again. Too close to rest, too close to relief. _We can’t have that, Samuel, now can we._

Maybe closing his eyes isn’t such a good idea.

He keeps them open as they slide him into the entrails of the massive machine, watches the space grow narrower around him as he moves through the tunnel; wills himself not to flinch when the movement stops abruptly and he finds himself encased, a horizontal wall of opaque, white plastic barely an inch away from his upturned face. _Trapped trapped nowhere to go._

“Sam?”

The voice is an unexpected relief. Right, they have speakers in here, he can talk. He can scream.

He breathes in, tries to sound calm as he says, “Yeah, I hear you.”

“Just letting you know there will be some loud noises, a lot of banging. Remember that’s perfectly normal. We need you to hold very still the whole time, even if it gets uncomfortable, okay?”

He wants to nod but doesn’t _._

“S- sure.”

There’s a moment of silence and then the machine starts up, the low hum increasing. He doesn’t mind the noise at first, too distracted by the feeling of the too-small space closing in on him, but by the time the loud banging sounds begin hammering in his ears and vibrating through his chest cavity, he finds himself on the verge of panic. He’s always had facts to count on, to grab onto, collect like beads he could arrange in neat rows when it came to problem solving. But somehow reason is unavailable now, irrelevant; a part of him that’s just a faint echo, no match for the wave of irrational terror. _Wait let me out of here Dean call Dean - -_

A memory of how Jess tried to teach him that guided imagery she was into back in freshman year, how she told him to close his eyes as she placed her warm hand on his forehead. _Stop twitching, this is good for you._ How she told him to think of somewhere safe. He could afford to close his eyes back then.

Coming up with a safe place was harder, but he managed to find something once he realized Jess wasn’t going to ask what it was. Some days it was just their living room, their bed; other days -- in spite of himself -- he thought of the Impala. Most days. Jess moved on to something else after a while, and he wasn’t quick to admit that he missed those moments. And then there was no one left to admit it to.  
  
Maybe he can try that exercise again, even with his eyes open. He breathes in, breathes out. _You’re at Bobby’s, lying on the couch, Dean cleaning his guns by the kitchen table and humming to himself. It’s late in the afternoon and the sun is filtering in through the blinds. You can hear Bobby working on a car outside, cursing the way he does when he’s not really annoyed, just passing time. There’s coffee in a steaming mug and the old TV is on, it’s all okay, you’re okay. Breathe in, breathe out._

He can’t tell how long he’s been doing this when he starts to lose his grip again. Feels like a while. Something is wrong with the surface he’s staring at; his eyes strain to focus. Everything just off to the center of his vision seems to liquefy, moving but not really, and the rest is too sharp, like reality itself is somehow... pixelating? Feels like he should be doing something about it, but he can’t seem to remember what.

He blinks, something tugging at the edges of his consciousness. It suddenly feels like his head is stuffed with cotton wool, clouds of it burying the words that try to form, _hey, let - - out - -_

He’s sliding back into the sleep-like state he’s come to know so well, and then deeper into dark, warm waters that feel like home. He doesn’t try to resurface. Nothing bothers him anymore, the light and the noise only a dull buzz in the distance. And then not even that.

***

Jeff frowns at the screen. Patients are rarely okay with being placed inside the MRI machine, and by now he’s used to pretty much everything ranging from nervous jokes to full-fledged hysterics. The only people he’s seen go through the process without at least _some_ anxiety are unconscious or heavily sedated patients.

The guy in there now is neither, and he’s had him on his toes from the get-go. Jeff can’t put his finger on it, can’t exactly recognize what it is that makes him uncomfortable; the man certainly didn’t cause any trouble. If anything, he was unusually quiet -- saying nothing unless directly addressed, standing where he was told, changing into a hospital gown and lying down without any inquiries, which is rare even with calmer patients. He lay still once inside the machine, and the internal camera indicated that he kept his eyes open, too -- most people tend to decide they’ve seen enough about ten seconds in, finding the whole thing too claustrophobic and nerve-racking.

But not this guy. He seems resolute on not closing his eyes, staring up like he’s trying to mentally drill a hole through the equipment. He doesn’t move, though, so Jeff leaves him alone, except to make sure he can hear okay.

It’s a little over thirty minutes in that he spots it on the camera feed, and at first he isn’t sure what he’s seeing -- what it is that has him sitting up in his chair, alarmed.

It’s something about the man’s face, a change so subtle that at first Jeff thinks he’s imagining things -- a slackening of features, the eyelids drooping ever so slightly, the lips parting. But then there’s that look in the man’s eyes; a dull, flat, _dead_ sort of absence. That look he knows.

He taps on the screen twice, absurdly, before he catches himself and bends down to speak into the microphone.

“You okay in there, buddy?”

No change in the unmoving face he’s now watching closely. The man blinks slowly, obviously awake but still unfocused, still unresponsive. Definitely not doing well in there.

“Sam, the machine is re-calibrating right now, it’s okay to nod your head or speak. How are you doing? Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

Jeff thinks to himself that he should probably stop the procedure, it’s nearly completed, anyway. But the patient is not in any obvious physical distress -- nothing unusual in the scan, either, at least nothing glaringly obvious -- and he finds himself wondering if keeping the guy in there just enough to get this done wouldn’t be better than potentially making him repeat the whole thing again later. Not to mention the grief he _knows_ he’ll have to take from management for running the process twice.

He sighs, studies the man’s vacant stare on the monitor again.

“Shit.”

Alyssa sticks her head in, chart in one hand, dangling something against the door jamb. “Hey, did you leave these in - - what’s wrong?”

Jeff reaches out for his keys and motions to the chair next to him, grateful. It’s not like he minds being left alone to deal with half the procedures -- they’ve been so stressed and overworked that doing a two-person job is a depressing routine by now -- but this is taking a disturbing turn.

“Thanks. I don’t know, I think the guy in there right now is having some sort of a… reaction. Not a physical one,” he adds, seeing the look on his colleague's face. They had a 24 year old code on them during a scan two months ago; it was a rarity, the perfect shitstorm of bad luck -- takes a lot for even an acute adverse reaction to the contrast agent to get _that_ extreme -- but they’ve all been jumpy ever since.

Alyssa cranes her neck to look through the glass, though not much is visible other than the patient’s legs. “Is that why you were asking if he could hear you just now?”

Jeff sighs again. “You heard that? Passing by the room?”

“Yeah, those speakers in there are **loud,** man. I don’t know how the patients can stand it.”

He rubs his temples, distracted. “It has to be loud, in case we need to communicate while it’s noisy in there. Okay, so the speakers are working then. That would have been my next guess. Huh.”

Alyssa pushes past him to look at the monitor -- personal space has never been her forté -- and Jeff feels vindicated in a weird way when she taps on the screen, too. “Is -- oh, okay. I thought the image froze for a second there. Wow, this guy looks… something is definitely off with him. I’d think he was dead if he wasn’t blinking.”

“Right? That’s what I thought. He’s conscious, but I don’t think he can hear me. He’s not responding at all, and he looks… I think he might be dissociating.”

Alyssa sits down, tries to muffle a yawn with her sleeve. “What’s that?”

Jeff thinks of Antoine’s unseeing eyes, his voice slurring in the supermarket parking lot last week. The oranges rolling on the ground. He never did ask him what triggered that particular episode; sometimes asking is risky, too. Just getting him to remember.

“It’s, um, a defense mechanism, I guess. Basically a way of tolerating pain. You see it a lot with people who - - with patients who have a certain kind of PTSD. I don’t know about this guy’s background, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out he has something like that. Says in the chart he was brought in for collapsing on the street, I think, and becoming unresponsive. Could have been the same thing we’re seeing now.”

Alyssa raises an eyebrow. “And this sort of non-responsiveness is part of -- what’s the term?  Dis-association?”

“Dissociation. Well, sometimes. I mean, depends on how bad it is. Usually people just get sort of confused, they’ll maybe seem a little spacey. But it can get more… extreme than that.”

Antoine’s face, pale against the dark blue pillow on a late Sunday morning, back before he knew. The faraway gaze that refused to shift, like he suddenly wasn’t there anymore, _what’s wrong? What did I say? Please, come on, you’re okay. You’re okay, hey, look at me. Babe, Wake up._ He actually thought it was some sort of a seizure, was ready to dial 911 by the time Antoine started to come around.

“Listen, this is just a wild guess. But I’m a little familiar with how it looks. If I’m right about this, the guy may have been triggered by something -- or he was just very anxious -- and his mind kind of shut itself down. He could be aware but not able to talk, or he might be completely out and not registering anything. Either way, I’m betting he won't remember getting the MRI at all when…” he hesitates.

“When he’s back to normal?” Alyssa is watching the screen again, keeping her eyes on it as she says, “is that what happens to Antoine sometimes? Like at the Christmas party last year?”

 _Well, shit._ Jeff shoots her a quick look, trying to come up with something convincing -- _what, no, he was just sleep-deprived and drunk, it was an off night --_ before he realizes there’s no point.

“Um, yeah. Antoine kind of… he does have a problem that’s a little bit like that. Most people can’t tell. Except when it’s bad, I mean.” He looks down. “I never really said thank you for the way you covered for us that night.”

It was easier to just not bring it up when he saw Alyssa at work after that fiasco, definitely easier than actually explaining what she had witnessed during the party. Antoine was mortified the next day, and it was hard enough having to tell **him** what had happened. _Mike grabbed you for a hug while we were talking, you weren’t ready for it, it went downhill from there._

He was tempted to leave out the rest, but he didn’t; they have an uneasy agreement about that, and he gets how being in the dark can sometimes be worse. _You didn't know where you were and why, I had to walk you out and get you home and you asked me what my name was while I was washing your face, it’s okay, really it is._

Discussing that with a co-worker (and sort of a friend, fine), who had watched them stumble out of the room twenty minutes in and knew full well that one drink too many was _not_ the issue, felt like too much. He didn’t want to explain what would cause that reaction, to go into Antoine’s past, and it was honestly a relief that Alyssa never mentioned it. Until now.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, eyes still on the screen. “So what do we do with this guy? Any ideas?”

Jeff is suddenly filled with gratitude, because of course she isn’t going to push the issue. It’s easy to forget that Alyssa is like that -- she lets you know she’s on to you, she moves on -- and anyway, he keeps underestimating people’s commitment to not getting involved.

“Well, he’s almost done, so I say we let him finish the scan and try to see what’s up when we pull him out. I mean, it’s -- “ he turns around to check “-- only around three more minutes.”

Alyssa nods. “Yeah, okay.”

Time goes by slowly as they both keep an eye on the still face on the monitor. Jeff is out of his chair and in the other room as soon as the process is over, nearly running towards the machine. He rests a careful hand on the patient’s ankle. “Hey, we’re done. We’re getting you out. You okay?”

There’s no response. Alyssa shakes her head, but says nothing; they both watch anxiously as the patient table slides out.

The man -- Sam -- is motionless, staring up dully, not even squinting at the light that washes over his face. As Alyssa moves a careful hand over his eyes, he doesn’t track the motion; his breathing remains the same, slow and barely audible. There’s no resistance as she leans forward to check his pupils with a penlight, though his head lolls sideways when she lets go of his face, and Jeff thinks to himself that the man _is_ resisting -- he can tell he’s sinking deeper somehow.

“Alyssa, give him a second. Might not be the best idea to flood him with stimuli right now.”

They stand there for a long moment, watching with increasing unease. Sam doesn’t _seem_ distressed, or even present for that matter. Jeff thinks to himself that it’s like he’s left his consciousness inside the massive machine, shed it before they could get him out.

As they consider what to do next, Sam’s eyelids flutter closed.

“Hey, no, look at me,” Jeff says, placing a hand on his shoulder and shaking him gently, “I need you to stay awake.”

Surprisingly, Sam obeys; his eyes blink lazily open, gaze distant as he stares blearily at Jeff’s scrubs. Jeff presses harder. “Come on, you can do it.” He snaps his fingers next to Sam’s ear. “You can hear us, right? Hey!”

Nothing. 

Alyssa sighs. “Should we go ahead and get him on his side?”

Jeff nods; he’s pretty sure the recovery position is better, even though their patient is unresponsive rather than unconscious. He’s seen it at home, on Antoine’s worst days. Staring up at the blank ceiling is conducive to more dissociation, for whatever reason; maybe it just makes it easier to slide out of focus.

And there’s also the fact that they can’t let their patient lie there and wait for him to recover while other cases are piling up -- not unless they want to spend the rest of the day filtering angry calls from every possible ward. And so they carefully roll the unresponsive man onto the transfer bed, push on his back to arrange him on his side. Sam is apathetic throughout; he doesn’t seem to know -- or care -- that he’s being moved, not even as Alyssa picks up his arm and examines it under the light.

“Shit, look at these scars. I mean, this guy has been through _something_ nasty _._ ” She angles a look down at their patient’s expressionless face. “You think he really isn’t feeling anything right now? He seems so… I don’t know.”  

Jeff shrugs. “No way to tell for sure.”

There have been times when Antoine knew about things that had happened while he was out, though he could never explain his lack of response in retrospect. Jeff finds himself wanting to reach into his lab coat pocket, though the phone isn’t in there. Wanting to call home and make sure everything’s okay. Which, of course, it is; Antoine is most likely knee-deep in textbooks and scribbled pieces of paper -- he’s not big on doing the more creative part of his studying on the computer -- and he’ll answer the phone distracted and half-annoyed, then ask him what’s wrong as soon as he hears his voice. He’ll know.

Maybe telling him isn’t such a bad thing. Other people’s triggers don’t necessarily affect him, and he could at least offer some insight into what someone with that condition might be feeling. And anyway, they keep having the same discussion about being overprotective, about how much Antoine hates being treated like he’s fragile; about remembering how much he can survive. Has survived.

Jeff flinches as a quick jab in the ribs lets him know Alyssa is anxious to move this along. “Call him,” she says, making her way around the transfer bed to grab hold of one end. Apparently his thought process is an open book. “But let’s get the guy out of here first. We’ve got Martinez for night shift -- it’s probably better if we stall until she clocks in. You know Allan will send a patient like this up without even assessing him, he’s an asshole like that. We at least have a shot with her -- she might keep him here and spare him the trip.”

Jeff nods. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Waking up in psych and not knowing how you got there isn’t... the best.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

They take the elevator down, and as they find Sam a spot way in the back of the ER, Jeff wonders if the guy has anyone waiting on him. There’s a phone number scribbled down on the top of the first page in his chart -- of course, in criminally illegible handwriting -- and he’s almost sure the word next to it is “family”, followed by a question mark. He leafs through the pages, finds a note that hasn’t been stapled, almost loses it to a gust of wind when an MVA comes in, the trauma team rushing past him and disappearing down the hall with an already-intubated patient.

He turns his attention back to the note. It’s short and heartbreaking, written in what he thinks is a woman’s handwriting.

_If the man wearing this is in trouble, please contact Dean Frehley or Ellen Harvelle, ASAP. His name is Sam, but he might not remember that. Please call._

That’s all there is, along with two phone numbers. He assumes the paramedics found the note in Sam’s coat, and wonders if Ellen Harvelle is the same person who wrote it; if she -- or maybe this Dean whose name she put first -- is pacing frantically in the waiting area. He doesn’t go there to check, though; not yet.

He reads the chart again. CBC is fine; toxicology came back negative; the MRI still needs to be analyzed, but he’s seen enough to doubt there’s anything in there that would account for the state Sam is in. The description of what happened in the field is too laconic to offer any real help in understanding what went wrong. A dissociative episode still seems like the most likely explanation, though Jeff does wonder if he’s too quick to assume that’s the issue, because… well, because. 

He’s staring at his phone when Antoine calls. Takes him a second to pull himself together.

“Hey.”

“Hey, babe.” Antoine sounds the kind of energetic that requires around 5 shots of espresso, way too close together. Or maybe he’s just in a good mood today. “Sorry I was asleep when you left. I know you can’t really talk when you’re there, but I’m -- oh, fuck it, I miss you. Sue me.”

Jeff can’t help but grin. “Shut up. I’m kinda glad you called.”

“Rough shift? Some bad injuries come through radiology again?”

“Yeah. I mean, no. Um. It’s just - - we’re dealing with this patient who seems...” Jeff closes his eyes. _Just tell him._ “He seems like he might be dissociated. Like, badly.”

There’s a short silence on the other end, then, “oh.”

Jeff sighs. “Yeah. People here are clueless, which they would be. Not 100% sure I’m right about this, but the guy looks like --” he stumbles to a stop too late, realizing there’s no way to avoid ending the sentence with _like you when you’re out._ “I’m a little worried about him.”  
  
Antoine sounds careful now. “Shit. Well that sucks.”

“Is - -  is it okay that I’m telling you this?”  
  
“What? Obviously, don’t be a moron. It’s not like I’m gonna burst into flames if you mention the word.”

Jeff can tell he’s rolling his eyes. “Yeah, okay. Right. Sorry. I guess I’m wondering what could, you know, help him out when he’s like this. If this is what I think it is. We pulled him out of the MRI completely unresponsive, and I get the feeling he was just… I don’t know, flooded. That he’s overwhelmed for some reason. What - - “ He closes his eyes again before he continues. “What helps when it gets bad like that? For you?”

Antoine sounds unusually hesitant. “I don’t - - I mean, it’s hard to remember. I don’t really know what happens. I just remember everything sort of… hurting, just before. Lights, noise, thoughts, feelings. Like being alive gets too much all at once. I guess that’s why everything shuts down.” He sighs. “The guy might just need to be left alone for a little while. If you keep poking and prodding at him, my guess is he’s only going to go under more. But it’s not like I know him. Was he brought in alone? Maybe someone who knows him could tell you. I mean, if they have any idea that he’s got this thing.”

Jeff nods glumly. “Yeah, well, not sure how much I can save him the poking and prodding here. We tucked him in the back to buy some time, put him on low priority for now. But this is still an ER.”

“Shit, you went down to the ER for the guy?” Antoine sounds impressed. “Listen, they’re gonna kick you out of there in no time, right? And radiology will have your ass if you don’t go back soon, anyway. I say your best bet is to talk to one of the docs there, let them know what’s up, and maybe check if there’s a next of kin around. That’s about it. You can’t keep watch over him, you know.”

“I know.”

Antoine’s voice softens. “You okay?”

Jeff shrugs. “Sure, yeah. And you’re right, obviously. It’s just hard to - -  it’s hard when you know someone’s - - “ he bites his lip. “It’s just hard.”

Antoine keeps quiet for a moment before he says, “you can’t save every broken person out there, babe. We’re not walking wounds for you to patch up.”

“Yeah. I don’t see you like that.”

“Sometimes you do.”

  
Jeff is about to protest when a noise at the front desk gets his attention. It’s a tall man who seems dangerously close to losing what little composure he has left, and somehow he knows, even before he hears the words _MRI_ and _my brother_ , just by the look on the guy’s face, that he’s found Dean.  

*


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **• Specific trigger warning for this chapter: past suicidal ideation (and then some) is described in one paragraph.**   
>  **• For general warnings and disclaimer, see chapter 1.**

 ***

The woman behind the front desk begins to raise her voice just as Jeff gets there.

“Sir, I _told_ you you’re going to have to wait until I can check with the attending, which I can’t do right this minute. I’m sure your brother is in good hands, and if you just sit down – “

But Dean Frehley is apparently over sitting and waiting. He moves right past annoyed and into menacing mode as he leans closer to the glass partition to stare through it, lowering his voice just a bit. It’s enough to make Jeff reconsider his plan to place a hand on his arm.

“You need to either get up off that chair and go inside, or pick up that phone and find out what's wrong – why they haven’t brought my brother back yet from the MRI. I’m gonna need you to get on that NOW.”

 _Kind of an asshole, possibly,_ Jeff thinks to himself. He steps closer.

“You’re Sam’s brother? Dean?”

He tries to sound casually interested, like maybe he caught the tail end of the exchange as he walked by. Which is hard to do when those eyes turn their glare on him. _Holy shit, this guy is intense._

Dean nods, frowning. “Yeah, you his doctor?”

“No, but I did his MRI, and I’m actually down here to talk to them about it.”

Dean suddenly looks like he got the wind knocked out of him, aggressive stance gone. “It’s - - you found something? In the scan?”

Jeff shakes his head. “No, nothing like that. Sam just - - you know what, let me talk to you over there, okay?” He gestures towards a corner near the exit, the only version of privacy the waiting room can offer. “Let’s leave Andrea here to do her work, and I’ll give you an update. I still need to talk to his doctor, but you’re right, you need to know what’s up.”

He can practically feel the wave of relief rolling off Andrea as Dean turns away from the desk to follow him. She’s not easy to intimidate, but this man is… well, he’s scarier than most. Jeff finds himself hoping that it’s just overprotectiveness – you rarely get to see people’s pleasant side in here, when they’re either sick or on high alert, ready to fight for a loved one in trouble. And Sam is definitely in trouble. It would suck if his brother turned out to be a bully, especially if he’s his caretaker like the note in Sam’s coat pocket suggests.

“So?” Dean’s eyes are hard, his mask back on now that the momentary panic is gone. But Jeff can tell he’s struggling to maintain a false sense of calm. _Too worried to be a real asshole. Good._ “Why isn’t Sam back from the MRI yet, if you guys didn’t find anything wrong?”

Jeff catches the man’s tone as he asks the question, can tell he’s already guessed the answer. _He knows what happened; of course he does. Can’t be the first time his brother checks out like that during a medical procedure. He just isn’t sure what_ **we** _know._

“Sam had some sort of an episode while we were performing the scan, somewhere towards the end. He didn’t lose consciousness, he just - - well...”

Dean leans back against the wall, his face a strange mix of sorrow and relief. “You’re saying he sort of went offline? Eyes glazed, not moving? Stopped responding?”

“Yeah. Exactly. You’ve obviously seen him do that before.” Jeff clears his throat, nervous. “I don’t think that’s what it is, but I still have to ask: does Sam have epilepsy? A seizure disorder, anything like that?”

Dean shakes his head, looks away.

Jeff sighs. “Yeah, didn’t think so. Look, it seems like you’re the type of guy who doesn’t like to beat around the bush, so I’m just gonna go ahead and ask you this point blank. What can you tell me about your brother’s trauma?”

Dean stiffens at the last word. “What?”

“If he’s having dissociative episodes this severe on a regular basis – and it sounds like he is – I have to assume he’s been through some type of serious trauma at some point in his life. Am I wrong?”

Dean is still avoiding Jeff’s eyes. “I don’t know what the hell ‘dissociative episodes’ are, but yeah, I told the other doc that Sammy was carjacked a while ago. If you’re looking for trauma, I think that should cover it.”

Jeff isn’t sure why he suddenly feels irritated, like he’s being lied to. “Was there anything else before that? Something more prolonged? I assume it would have come up by now, but was he ever in the army?”

Dean looks up, and God damn, there’s that thousand yard stare, just like Sam’s – definitely a family story there, Jeff thinks – though, unlike his brother, he does talk. “You could say he’s seen some combat.”

“Meaning?”

Dean closes his eyes. “Look, um - - ”

“Jeff.”

“Jeff. I’m not - - Sam’s been through a lot. If there’s nothing physically wrong with him, though, some hospital sharing and caring won't be what fixes it. Are you done with the tests? Is he all cleared?”

“You want to take him home.”

“Well, _yeah_.” Dean is getting impatient again, pushing himself off the wall – not without a considerable amount of effort, Jeff notes – seemingly ready to go search the hospital for his brother. Jeff raises a hand, though he’s careful to do it slowly. “Woah, okay, wait a minute. You can sign Sam out AMA if you’re his legal guardian” – he watches Dean flinch at the term, _okay then, not the case_ – “but obviously, since he’s still unresponsive, that wouldn’t be the best idea. Right now we’ve got him in a bed in the ER. Like I told you, that’s why I’m here. To make sure they know what’s going on with him. That they treat him right.”

Dean deflates. “I didn’t see you bring him back down from the MRI.”

“Yeah, there’s another way in. I’m sorry no one came to talk to you right away, but that happens when it gets crowded in there.” Not entirely true this time, but he can hardly tell the guy that he procrastinated because he wasn’t sure what the hell to do with his unresponsive brother.

Dean is watching the paramedics bring a new patient in, his face grim. “So Sam is still - - look, I gotta go see him. Just show me where he is. He can’t be alone when he’s out like that, that’s how he got in this mess in the first place.”

Jeff nods. “I can get you in there, but you have to work with me, okay? Here’s the deal: I’m not really supposed be down in the ER right now, so I need to hurry up and catch the attending before I go back up to radiology. If I bring you in with me right now, they’ll just kick you out once I’m gone. Easier if you wait a couple more minutes and let me make sure the doc is in the loop, first; she’ll let you stay with Sam if she knows the circumstances.” After a moment’s thought he adds, “it’s better for him if you don’t have to constantly fight with the staff. He doesn’t need the extra stress.”

Dean was winding up for an argument, but he seems to reconsider when he hears the last sentence.

“Fine. But if you don’t come back out here soon, and I mean _real_ soon – ”

“You’re going in regardless. Yeah, I don’t doubt that. Give me a few minutes.”

Jeff can feel Dean’s eyes on his back as he walks away, can hear the question the man isn’t asking out loud. _Why do you care so much about my brother?_

He’s not sure which part of him it is that answers, resigned, _because I have to._

*

“I would have gotten to him eventually, you know.” Laura is leaning against the wall, obviously annoyed at the prospects of pulling a double shift on the weekend – nothing new there. Jeff knows the resident just well enough to remain unimpressed by her surliness. Which is why he cornered her as soon as she stepped in – Alyssa wasn’t wrong about her being the better option, as far as attendings go.

“Yeah, I know. But I need to make sure you get the full picture on this one before I go back upstairs. It’s a bit of an unusual case. And he took a turn for the worse while we were running the MRI, too, so you’ll need to know about that, and I gotta - -”

“Oh, _fine_. Now you got me interested.” Laura gives him a crooked smile before she follows him to Sam’s bed; she studies the patient’s face as she reaches for the chart hanging off the railing. “Hi, I’m Dr. Martinez.”

Sam doesn’t meet her eyes, staring into space the same way he did before they approached. His mouth has dropped open and his head is hanging at a weird side-angle, like he’s somehow forgotten that he has use of his muscles. The pillow is damp where it meets the corner of his mouth, like even swallowing is an action he isn’t aware enough to maintain.

 _He’s sinking_ , Jeff thinks. He shudders at another unwanted image of Antoine, silent and suddenly hollowed out as a dead tree trunk. _Gone_. Last time that happened was probably his worst episode yet, and that only lasted a few minutes before he started to come back; Sam has been like this for over an hour, so far. And not even for the first time today.

Laura frowns, flips through the pages.

“Huh. Okay, says here he’s pretty responsive to painful stimuli and to light, right?”

Jeff nods. “Right. But we’re not getting any cooperation when we try to communicate with him, and he seems unaware most of the time. I know you’ll want to check for the usual suspects with these symptoms, but - um - - “

Martinez raises an eyebrow. “Come on, just say what you’re thinking, even if it’s way out there. You know I won’t bite. Too tired.”  

Jeff snorts before he can catch himself. At least she’s aware that misanthropy is pretty much her brand; self-humor isn’t always a given around here. He can appreciate that. “So I took a quick look at the scan back in radiology, nothing obvious; his lab results came back clear too, other than very mild dehydration. I get the feeling he’s maybe more altered than anything else. This is starting to look like some sort of a psychiatric crisis. Probably PTSD-related, if I had to guess.”

The attending squints at him, surprised. “Well, that’s… specific. What about this makes you think we’re looking at traumatic response?”

Jeff takes Sam’s hand, carefully uncurls the limp fingers and presses on the center of his palm. “Easier if I show you. Watch his upper arm.”

Sam doesn’t make a sound or shift his gaze, seeming completely oblivious, his eyes still unfocused and unblinking; but they can both see the way his shoulder pulls back convulsively, almost a reflex motion.

“He’s trying to get away,” Laura says, surprised. “That’s odd.”

Jeff nods. “And I’m not squeezing nearly hard enough to cause any pain, right?”

He repeats the action with Sam’s other hand, more gently this time, with the same result.

“See, I don’t think much of anything we say to him is registering, but he’s obviously hypervigilant. You can tell his system is wired to over-respond to some types of stimuli, even when he’s mentally shut down. You don’t get like that without a damn good reason.” 

He claps by the man’s ear. Sam’s face remains expressionless, but his full-body flinch is impossible to miss.

Laura nods. “I’d say _severely_ hypervigilant. And definitely conscious. Just not completely… what, aware?“

Jeff sighs. “Yeah. Says in the chart that Davis spoke to the guy for a bit before they sent him our way for the MRI, but the notes don’t make much sense. Sounds like Sam was in and out, and his brother did some of the talking for him, too. So Davis probably had no idea what he was looking at.”

“And you think you do.”

Jeff shrugs. “I mean, yeah, maybe. Hard to tell for sure, but the way things went down while we were doing the scan, I do think this looks like a post-traumatic reaction. Something like a severe dissociative episode would be my guess.” He hesitates, considers adding _I’ve seen this before_ , decides not to. He has no desire to discuss the when and where again.

“The brother’s out in Chairs, you should probably have a word with him – try to get a history. I’m not 100% clear on whether or not we’re dealing with a war vet here. Or maybe there’s some old trauma, like early abuse. The guy - his name is Dean - might know about that, too. Although I should tell you, he’s pretty worked up. He’s been waiting for a long time, and he’s worried.” Jeff hesitates, then adds sheepishly, “I told him we’d let him in to sit with Sam while we have him here.”

Laura studies their patient’s face, looking uneasy. “I’ll bring the guy in, but if you’re expecting to get that kind of a history out of him, don’t. Odds are we’re not going to get anything useful as far as past trauma goes; and if we’re talking childhood trauma, you can damn near _count_ on not getting anywhere. People think it’s just the parents that can be in denial about that sort of thing, but - ”

“I know.” Jeff doesn’t even try not to think of Antoine’s siblings, about birthdays and anniversaries that turn into reminders of absence. Antoine’s life is a graveyard some days, riddled with blank headstones for the living. He was the one who taught Jeff how the act of remembering and the act of forgetting can both mean betrayal to _someone_ when your family was the scene of the crime.

Jeff sighs. “Still, we gotta try and get ahead of this thing. They’re having a bad week in psych, half their staff is down with that bug that’s been going around. The guy is going to be with us until midnight, easy. If we can figure out what’s going on with him in the meantime, we might be able to… I don’t know, bring him back a little? I’d hate to just leave him like this for hours without at least trying something.”

Laura nods. “Okay, yeah. Listen, I’ll go call radiology and tell them I needed you for a consult, and that I’m sending you up in ten. I just need to hear what exactly happened during the scan before I talk to the brother. Be right back.”

As Martinez disappears down the hall, Jeff angles a look at the silent man.

“Hey, Sam,” he says, moving carefully closer to block his patient’s view of the typical ER chaos going on in the background. “Can you hear me? I think you’ve been away long enough, man. Listen, you’re done with the scan, no more medical nonsense, I promise. It’s really okay.”

He studies Sam’s eyes, noticing that the long, slow blinks are almost gone now. Instead, the man’s eyelids seem to slide half-closed and then open over and over again, fluttering in a strange, almost hypnotic rhythm. Not a seizure; something - - something else --

Yeah, he knows that, too. Of course; Antoine’s fingers twitching against his knee as they sat in a train car, his eyes far away and lost, unaware of where he was. His lips forming the same word soundlessly again and again in a restaurant on their anniversary, when he shut down because their server reminded him of someone from back home. The mild, but still noticeable way in which he sometimes rocks back and forth when he’s gone beyond hearing or feeling or remembering where he is.

Jeff has seen the occasional altered patient do that in the hospital, too. Strange, repetitive movement, almost like people get stuck somehow. Or maybe that’s not what that is; maybe they find a sort of comfort in repetition. Something deep and primal that he can’t relate to.

 _Why do you do that?_ They were curled up in front of the TV, trying to ignore the fact that it was a perfect fucking day outside and that they had spent all of it indoors, plans abandoned, all the air sucked out of the apartment. Some days are just like that. Didn’t start out that way; Antoine had half-jokingly moaned over breakfast about being the oldest living grad student on campus, _you haven’t seen those kids, I’m practically geriatric to them,_ and Jeff had teased him about it mercilessly. Because it was easier than thinking about why it had taken him so long to get there, about the wreckage he’s had to wade through and how he was nowhere near done. Easier to laugh with him than to say _shut up, I’m so proud of you._ But then the entire day went off the rails, thanks to a news story about abuse that Antoine came across while he was looking for something online. So much for celebrating.

Antoine was still quiet, lax against Jeff’s chest on the couch, his eyes wandering; still in the process of coming all the way back from another slide into that low-level consciousness. He blinked at the question.

_Wh - - what?_

_Why do you do that? Why do you - - you know, there’s this thing you do when you’re not all here. You keep moving your fingers, you mumble the same word over and over again. Stuff like that. Is that you trying to tell me something? Asking for something? Do I need to know what that means?_

But Antoine had no idea what he was talking about. Not an attempt at communication, then; not a rational thing he could explain. Maybe just a twitch of agony, an unconscious beacon his body sends out on its own when it’s unoccupied. Less occupied.

Jeff ignores a fleeting urge to lay a hand over Sam’s restless eyelids, muffle the way in which the sight makes him ache for comfort, for somewhere else, for anywhere else. Instead he leans a bit closer to the unresponsive man’s face, forces himself to look into his dilated pupils.

“Sam, I know you’re feeling overwhelmed, but I really need you to try here. Can you look at me?”

He carefully tilts Sam’s head to force eye contact, watches the dull hazel gaze drift over his face without really seeing it. He can tell there’s no conscious thought behind that lifeless stare, not yet.

“Okay, I’m back.” Laura drags over a stool and sits down by the bed, smiling at him. “Got an earful from radiology, but what else is new.” She impatiently pulls on her hair to put it up in what appears to be an extra-messy version of the messy bun. Jeff decides to keep his bird’s nest imagery to himself; they’re not quite close enough for teasing yet. And frankly, he’s not exactly looking daisy-fresh, either.

Laura gestures towards an intern who slinks in after her, looking nervous. _And clearly hungover,_ Jeff notes to himself. _That’s not gonna fly here, not with Martinez._ “This is Miller, he’s new. He’s just observing today, don’t worry.” Miller wilts a bit into his new lab coat, wisely chooses to remain silent as Laura turns to look at their patient. “So, tell us everything we know about this guy again. Start from the beginning.”

***  

Time has lost all meaning again, expanding and contracting, passing him by as he floats in a vacuum. He doesn't care; the hurt is gone. That's all that matters. Something about that is ominously familiar, but he knows it’s too dangerous to remember.

Voices fading in, growing louder. He tries in vain to dissolve, to disappear, go away.

"Sam Frehley, male, early thirties. Brought in for collapsing on the street, unclear if he lost consciousness or just became non-responsive. We got him talking here, but then he shut down again halfway through an MRI. We haven’t detected any physiological cause so far, and based on what we got from his brother about this being a known issue, looks like there might be an emotional source.”

He loses track for a while, the words all blending together, though not enough for him to ignore them. He recognizes what he thinks is his name, _Sam, is it Sam_?

“... Sam isn’t communicating just yet. He was before, though. I’ve been trying to get him to come back to us." The last words sound aimed at him, the change in tone ringing like empathy, and he won't fall for it, not again _let me go I'm not coming back I've had enough - -_

"Sam?"

_Name. Your name. Run leave go now - -_

Hushed conversation, and then another voice, too close. A woman.

"Sam, hey, no - - I need you to try and keep your eyes open for me. Just for a sec, okay?"

Are his eyes closed?

A hand touching his arm, pressing on his shoulder gently. "Sam."

He becomes increasingly aware of the distant rattle of distress, and the memory of the torment that still awaits him _(not going anywhere Samuel, all we’ve got down here is time, thanks to you)_ floods him with panic. _Stop no please go away please please._

The hand is still gripping his bicep, fingers moving like spiders on his skin, he’s trapped _trapped_ _trapped_. His body reacts, muscles seizing, breathing growing rapid.

“Hey, hey. Sam, it’s okay. You’re in the hospital, you just had some tests done. Everything’s alright, you’re safe.”

He tries to speak, tries to tell them they’re wrong, that nothing is okay, nothing is safe because, because - - but all his mouth produces is an incoherent mumble, his eyes refuse to open. _Glued shut. Did Lucifer tar them shut again?_

The first voice is speaking somewhere above his head. “I’d say our priority right now should be mainly to ground him.”

He’s still trying unsuccessfully to get away from the grip on his arm, hears the faint mewl of distress before he’s aware that he’s the one making it.

“I know, Sam. I know. I still need you to open your eyes, okay? Even if it’s very, very hard.”  

He shakes his head. At least he thinks he does.

“No? You don’t want to open your eyes? Can you tell me why?”

His brain somehow finds the word in the deep, black mud it’s encased in, drags it out.

“Hu - - hurts. Hurts.”

A few seconds of silence, then the hand releases its grip.

“Alright, okay. Sam, I promise no one here is going to hurt you. Breathe.”

The voice sounds more distant now, like the person is moving away. “Looks like it’ll take time. Something has him too scared to surface.”

“Yeah. I need to head back, Laura. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. Just go over what exactly happened during the MRI, and then I’ll walk you out through Chairs, so that we can - - ”

He doesn’t hear the rest, sinking gratefully down, down, down _never coming up for air never coming back no no no._

He sleeps.

***

The waiting room feels too small, too crowded. There aren’t even that many people; they’ve been to far worse hospitals than this one. But Dean is beginning to feel claustrophobic. A quick look around him makes it clear that no one else is finding the oxygen in the room insufficient.

_Great. Go ahead and freak out while you wait for them to let you see Sam. That’ll help things go faster._

He clenches and unclenches his fists, stares outside through the large window. Feels like it’s still noon, but the street is dark. He wonders if that’s what it’s like for Sam, never being able to trust what he’s feeling.

The woman at the front desk occasionally raises her head to survey the room, and she gives him a dirty look every time. He can’t really blame her. He was half ready to break something by the time that doctor (or was the guy a med tech?) approached him and took him aside to talk about Sam. He doesn’t meet her eyes. _She’ll get over it._

Three more minutes. If they don’t come out to get him in three more minutes, he’s going in and fuck their rules. He can’t stand the thought of Sam alone on some gurney in there, staring into nothing. Being manhandled and moved around without warning, being talked about but not talked to, because they assume he’s out. And he might be, but what if he can feel and see and hear everything, unable to move or think or say _stop, hurts_ , what if he’s terrified - -

He doesn’t realize right away that it’s sulfur he’s smelling. The kind he only came to know down there, the kind that melts your lungs and boils your eyes in their sockets. He’s still breathing though, can still see. _Not there. Not down there with Alastair, not on the rack. Not standing by the rack, either, no razor in his hand, no guts on the floor no blood in his mouth - -_

He blinks hard, digs his fingers into his forearm. _Here, definitely here._ The light feels too bright, but that’s fine, it means he’s topside. He’s still here and he needs to check on Sammy. Make sure he knows where he is, too.

As soon as he can move his legs.

His phone buzzes. Text from Bobby, checking in because he hasn’t heard from him in hours. Dean hates the way his hands shake as he types a response. _Stop it. Just stop._

 _No news,_ he writes, _still waiting on Sam. Had another episode inside MRI. Will write later._

He barely manages to hit send, still distracted by the phantom smell of sulfur, though it’s almost gone now. It’s getting increasingly hard not to keep looking around when every cell in his body is insisting that there has to be an actual demon in the room. He hates the landmines his brain keeps setting up for him ever since Hell, and they make him a fucking liability on a hunt, too –– Sam hasn’t said a word about the times when Dean nearly shot his head off because he thought he saw or smelled something that wasn’t there, but Dean knows he’s noticed.

Not that they’ll be going hunting any time soon.

Bobby’s response is exactly what he’d expect. _Shit. Let us know._ And about 30 seconds later, another text: _He awake now?_

Dean doesn’t answer. Instead he takes a deep breath, releases it slowly. _Two more minutes. Give them that much._ The guy was right about needing to get Sam’s doctor on board; he’s been kicked out of enough busy ER’s to know that. But the waiting gives him time to wonder about what Sam felt inside that machine that made him go under again. He can all too easily imagine why the MRI turned out to be one of Sam’s personal landmines – you don’t spend decades in Hell (or minutes climbing out of your own grave, for that matter) without getting a pretty good idea about what being buried alive might do to a person’s tolerance for small spaces.

The thought does nothing to ease his guilt about the amount of time Sam has been spending alone today. He’s just about to head inside, _screw waiting, let them try to kick me out,_ when he sees Jeff heading his way with a couple of doctors. One of them looks utterly useless, but the other seems confident enough to possibly know what she’s doing, so he reserves judgment. Well, sort of. 

Jeff smiles at him, surprisingly warm. The guy has been inexplicably friendly, and Dean wonders why that is. “Hey, Dean. This is Dr. Laura Martinez. She’s in charge here, so you’ll be talking to her. Before we get you inside to see Sam, could you - - um - ” Jeff hesitates. The doctor takes the hint.

“Your brother is a bit of a mystery to us,” she says, gesturing at the row of chairs for them to sit down. _Great,_ Dean thinks, _so this is gonna take a while._

He can sense the doctors’ eyes on him as he plops down on one of the blue plastic seats, barely holding back a groan, and he hopes he doesn’t look as beat to hell as he feels. The last thing he needs is for the staff to wonder if he’s fit to take care of Sam.

“What do you mean, a mystery?” he asks, though he knows perfectly well what will come next.

It takes him about seven minutes to go through the same dance he’s already done with Jeff and with the previous doctor -- _yes, Sam has shut down like this before, no, I don’t know why_ ; the made-up carjacking story that’s supposed to give them something solid to pin Sam’s post-traumatic symptoms on, because he can’t exactly tell them about the Cage; avoiding the details of their past and their home life. It’s all familiar and achingly pointless, and to her credit, the doctor appears to find it as frustrating as he does. Also to her credit, she doesn’t seem at all surprised by his evasiveness.

“Okay,” she finally says, raising an eyebrow and turning to Jeff. “I think we get the picture, or as much of it as we _can_ get. You should probably go back, right? Before they send out a search party.”

Jeff gives her little grin, though his heart doesn’t seem to be in it. “Yeah, an armed one, too.”

He turns to Dean, his smile falling. “So, I’m going to leave you with Dr. Martinez here. You’re in good hands. I’ve spoken to her about what I think might be going on with Sam, and about what I saw during the scan. I really think you being by his side would be the best thing for him right now. Hopefully he’ll come back to himself soon.”

Dean watches the man as he walks over to the front desk to get a piece of paper, scribbles down a note and hands it to him. “Listen, this is my cell number. If there’s any trouble, or if you need someone to run things by, feel free to call. Really. You and your brother seem like good people, and I’d hate for Sam to slip through the cracks.”

He doesn’t know what to say, dumbstruck by this sudden display of generosity. And a bit suspicious. _Why would anyone - - what?_

But Jeff is already on his way, waving at Dr. Martinez and Nameless Intern #2 as he disappears around a corner. Dean looks down at the piece of paper, speechless.

 _My fiancé has the same condition as Sam,_ the note reads _. Call if either of you needs someone to talk to. And tell Sam he didn’t do or say anything embarrassing. He’ll want to know that, trust me._      

Dean stares at the text, at the phone number written just below it, at the scuffed floor. At his feet. At the back of a chair. At anything that might keep him from feeling what he’s feeling, _stop it right the fuck now._

He clears his throat, stuffs the note in his pocket. His eyes are dry, he’s in control. _There’s nowhere safe._ He’s in control.

“Okay,” he says, looking up at the doctor who seems to be watching him carefully. “Can I go see my brother?”

She nods. “Yeah, sure. Follow me.”

He finds it hard to catch his breath on the way in, but it’s when he sees Sam again that he really feels like all the air is squeezed out of his lungs.

Sam wasn’t looking well before, but now he’s looking half dead. His eyes are closed, though not all the way, like he isn’t quite conscious enough to notice. And he’s paler than before, his limbs looser against the hospital mattress, like part of him has somehow uncoiled more than it ever should. Like he’s let go and is free falling. _What the hell happened?_

Dean stands by the gurney for a minute, staring at his brother. Part of him wonders if this is how it’s going to be from now on, if Sam is going to spend the rest of his life shutting down and disappearing time and time again, getting progressively worse. Because their reality -- any reality, in fact -- seems to be little more than an endless march of triggers for him, and neither of them can predict what they don’t understand.

“You’re the older brother, right? How long have you been Sam’s caretaker?” The doctor sounds cautious, like she knows the question is a loaded one, but the words still hurt. He frowns, avoiding her eyes.

“I’m not his caretaker. Sam doesn’t need a caretaker. He’s just - - he has his off days, his bad hours. But it’s not like he’s helpless.”

It feels absurd, saying that while looking at Sam’s still face pressed against the hospital pillowcase, at his arm hanging limply over the railing (when did they hook him up to an IV?). He looks about as wounded and helpless as he’s been in a long time.

If the doctor is tempted to point out the ridiculousness of Dean’s statement, she resists the urge well. All she says is, “okay. So you guys are dealing with this as it comes.”

“Pretty much, yeah.” He makes himself sit down, keeps his eyes on Sam. Behind him, the doctor – is her name Laura? – lowers her voice to tell the intern to get lost, or at least that’s what Dean assumes, judging by the way the guy disappears down the hall in a huff a few seconds later. Dean wonders if she thinks she has a better chance of getting information out of him in private, like what the hell _really_ happened to Sam.

 _Good luck with that,_ he thinks, _I don’t think Sam even knows._

Apparently the woman can read a room, though, because all she says is, “I’m guessing you’re pretty tired by now.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, a little. S’okay, not my first time watching over this dumbass in a hospital.” __First time I_ _helped_ _put him there, though._ _ He closes his eyes as the thought comes, sour and mocking. __Tell the doc more about how tired you are, come on. About how you just didn’t get enough_ _of your beauty sleep_ _in that car today._ _

“I don’t mean that,” Laura says. She sounds like she’s sorry -- for him or for Sam, he isn’t sure -- as she adds, “I meant to say that you’ve probably been worried about him his whole life. Am I right? You look like you’re the type.”

Dean finds himself smiling, sort of. “Oh, yeah? And what exactly _is_ the type?”

She smiles back at him. “I don’t know, hard to say. Some older siblings are just like that. Weight of the world on their shoulders, that kind of thing. You can tell they don’t even remember what life was like before they were someone’s big brother.”

Well, that’s not exactly true. Not for him. He doesn’t remember much before Sam, but he remembers full well what it feels like _without_ Sam. He’s had practice, long before Hell or the Cage.

He nods at the doctor as she tells him she’ll be right back, watches her distractedly as she walks away to take a call. Too late, he can’t avoid the memory now.

Which is bad, because he doesn’t like to think about that year. One of the reasons he headed straight to Lisa’s after Stull Cemetery was that he knew what he was in for, with Sam gone. Had learned the hard way, back in his early twenties. And he was surprised, though not truly relieved, when the devastation never came this time; at least, it came in a form he could live with. The mornings were bad again, each and every one, despite Lisa and Ben. But it was a different kind of bad – the concrete thought of his brother starting another day in the Cage. Knowing that for Sam, years will have passed by the time night falls. Going through the day was a matter of pain management, of breathing through it. Smiling through it.

It wasn’t exactly grief, because he knew Sam still existed; more an ache that nested in his chest, almost palpable. _Miss him. Gotta help him_. _Sammy._ It was a different beast, not the thing that almost killed him when Sam left for Stanford. _That’s_ the year he tries hardest to forget about.

Back then, there was no pain; he just felt hollow. Dead. Mornings that year were flat and grey, the weight of every single molecule in the room – in the universe, somehow – pressing down on him as soon as his eyes blinked open. Dad didn’t know what to make of it, which meant he reverted to his default; but he couldn’t stay angry for long, because Dean didn’t have any pushback left in him.

John tried to drag him out of one motel room after another for nights out, and then during the day just for the sake of being outside, if there was no hunt to take care of that. Dean remembers a dull, distant discomfort at the way his father watched him from across countless diner tables while he stared at his plate, trying to make himself believe that he could eat.

One night they had to go hustle some pool because there was literally no money left, and it was too cold to sleep in the Impala. Nothing particularly challenging for him, nothing new. He managed to get himself up and into the bar, and he went ahead and played his part beautifully; and then he stumbled out back and threw up in the alley, struggling to breathe on his knees by the dumpster. He remembers his father’s arm around his shoulder, his eyes dark and worried, his voice doing that thing it did whenever he was feeling too much and decided to feel nothing at all. _I know you miss him, but you can’t fall apart on me like that, we’ve got a job to do._

He remembers trying.

He doesn’t remember the night he got back to Sioux Falls after spying on Sam in Stanford, Sam who looked so happy and at ease with his college buddies, Sam who suddenly seemed so young out of battle ( _he’s just 18,_ Dean suddenly realized, _he’s a teenager for fuck’s sake, still_ ) and awkward and sweet around girls. Sam who was unfamiliar and yet somehow _whole_ in his new life in a way Dean never was, never knew was possible. Sam who had truly left.

Dad never spoke about that night, but Bobby did. He told him about the fight ( _you don’t contact your brother, ever, he’s GONE),_ about John breaking half the kitchen before he took off, about 1 AM when Bobby realized Dean was nowhere to be found and about when he finally did find him.

He doesn’t remember the empty field two miles down the road, or the bottle of scotch or the gun in his hand, doesn’t remember what Bobby said that finally got to him. What made him not go through with it. He doesn’t remember Bobby and John watching him 24/7 the weeks after. It’s all a fog he somehow found his way clear of, eventually. By the time Dad went missing, he was mostly okay.

He didn’t die, and he doesn't like to think about that year, that night, because sometimes it feels less like it was a close call and more like he missed his exit.

He sighs, takes a long breath before he leans forward to talk to Sam again, beg him to wake the hell up already, _please, we can’t keep doing this._

It’s then that he realizes Sam is looking right at him.

***

It’s sunny. He’s walking through an endless field of feathergrass, his hand outstretched to touch the tall, downy blossoms as he moves forward. There’s wind on his face, cool and dry and fragrant, and Sam can’t tell if this is a dream, can’t tell how he got here and he doesn’t think he minds, because everything is green and swaying around him and _this is where you forget, this is where you’re allowed to, this is where you let go so close your eyes, close your eyes it’s okay_ \- -

But his eyes _**are** _ closed. It’s not the sun shining through his eyelids (paper-thin, first thing to go whenever Lucifer decides to burn him to ashes again); no, it’s something white, cold. He flexes his hand and instantly knows that the thing that’s tangled between his fingers and coiling against his forearm is plastic, nothing like the soft brush of grass. _IV drip. You know where you are._

He wants to cry, but there are no tears left in him, and there’s no point.

He opens his eyes.

The last thing he clearly remembers is the inside of the MRI, but he seems to be back in the ER now. Dean is there, slumped on a visitor’s chair by his bed; he’s staring at the edge of the hospital blanket with that distant expression that Sam knows means bad news. He looks exhausted, just like he did earlier, but he also looks… small. His hands clasped together in his lap, his face unguarded the way it must always be when he thinks no one is watching, his brother looks like he’s in pain. And scared.

Sam bites his lip against a surge of misery, _this is what you do to him, why can’t you just keep your shit together for - -_

Dean sighs, turns his gaze to him. The way he lights up when he realizes Sam is awake, that he’s present again, makes Sam ache. _It takes so little these days._

“Sammy, hey. You back with us?”

Sam nods, not fully trusting his voice. Then he forces himself to speak anyway, because it’s the least he can do, and Dean is still looking at him like he’s trying to assess his level of awareness. “Yeah, I’m here. I’m good. Did I - - did I go away again? During the scan?”

Dean nods. “You’ve been under for a while, too. Probably two hours straight. They said they tried everything they could think of to wake you up, but you were pretty much dead to the world.”

Sam feels his pulse quickening, his face getting hot with embarrassment. “Oh. Shit, I’m - - I’m sorry, I think something in there must have… I don’t know.” He clears his throat, struggles to sit up. His muscles protest the idea, but it’s a distant kind of pain, nothing he can’t ignore. “What’s with the IV?”

Dean gets up to fiddle with the clear bag. “It’s just saline and that sort of crap, they probably wanted to get some fluids in you. I don’t th- ” he stops and stares as Sam carefully pulls the needle out of the back of his hand, furrowing his brow. “Dude, what the hell are you doing?”

Sam shrugs. “I’m feeling fine. They’ll be discharging me soon, anyway, right? I mean, once they see I’m alright.”

“Oh, you’re peachy.”

Sam is too distracted to take offense at Dean’s tone; he’s looking around frantically, because something else is suddenly occurring to him. “Where are my - - why am I not wearing - - ”

“Oh, I’m guessing they made you put the hospital gown on just before you got the scan. Your clothes are probably in there.” Dean points to a paper bag that some kind soul took the time to place at the end of the mattress by Sam’s feet, for safekeeping. “Although I gotta say, Sammy, you’re really rocking the frilly nighty look. A little wind in your hair and I’d cast you in _The Exorcist_ , any day.”

Sam relaxes a bit, reaches out for the bag to check its contents. Everything’s in there, including his boots and socks. Someone took those off him and he didn’t feel it, doesn’t remember. The thought messes him up more than it should, by now.

“Oh. Yeah, okay.”

He blinks blearily for a moment, trying to retrieve at least some of the information he’s lost, then gives up. Either it’ll come back at some point or it won’t. “What did the doctor say? I mean, they didn’t find anything on the MRI, did they?”

Dean snores. “Of course not. I told you, nothing in there but -- “

“Yeah, yeah. Seriously though.”

Dean’s face tells him _something_ has been said, and that it’s probably not something he would like. “Well - - I mean, it’s not like they know you here. They’re pretty much just scratching their heads trying to figure it out.”

Sam forces the next words out. “Okay, so what do they _think_ is wrong with me? They must have mentioned something.”

Dean doesn’t look at him as he says, “I don’t know, man, one of the docs said something about trauma.”

Sam looks at him blankly. His voice sounds flat to him, somehow wrong as he repeats, “trauma. That’s what they said? What, that I’m post-traumatic? They think that’s what makes me go away like that? Lose time?”

Dean nods, says nothing. Sam studies his face.

“And you think they’re right.”

“I don’t know, Sammy. Doesn’t sound that far fetched. Something _happened_ to you in that cabin, and you can’t just - - what are you doing?”

 _Calm. Stay calm._ Sam tries to sound casual as he says, “I’m getting dressed. We need to go. Ellen and Bobby are probably worried, and there’s no point in staying here now that I’m okay.”

He can feel Dean’s eyebrows being raised without even looking at him. “Oka- - Sam, are you kidding me? You _just_ came back from, what, two hours of being practically catatonic? You are not okay.”

Sam sighs, pulling his jeans up under the hospital gown before taking it off to wear his now-wrinkled T and overshirt. “Where’s my coat?”

“Sam, stop for a minute. Come on.”

He locates his coat (why is there mud all over the back? Was he - - oh. The park. He was in the park, he was on the ground, people were yelling). “Listen, Dean, I get it, okay? I’m not an idiot. I know I’m still in trouble. But they can’t help me here. Right?”

His brother nods, looking defeated. “I know they can’t, but I just - - I don’t know, I thought you’d maybe give it a few minutes. See if you’re stable before we start sneaking out. We _are_ sneaking out, right?”

Sam thinks about facing the staff. About how many strangers must have touched him, talked at him, tried to wake him while he was cold and mute and gone, just today.

“Yeah, we’re sneaking out.”

He buttons the flannel and grabs his coat, looking out into the hallway. “We don’t know what’s going to make it happen again, anyway. And I need to get away from here, there are too many variables, too much shit that makes it worse. I’m sorry you got dragged here, I don’t know wh- - “

“Oh, shut up. Fine, you’re right. Let’s head out.”

***

Dean thinks to himself that it’s a good thing, sort of. A Sam who’s hard-headed and impatient and anxious to move is better than a Sam who’s silent and unaware and unresponsive, and it’s not like he was expecting the doctors to actually offer a solution to his brother’s condition. That’s the word Jeff used in his note; _condition._ Like there’s a name for it, like what Sam has been struggling with is written down in a textbook somewhere.

He suddenly wants to go back and grab Sam’s chart, see if there’s a lead there. But they’re already heading down the stairwell, and returning to the ER means risking another encounter with a staff member. They’ve both had plenty of experience with leaving hospitals AMA; it takes forever, and Sam doesn’t have that.

He watches his brother as they walk through another floor. It’s strange to see Sam go from detached and slow to alert and sharp, back to his old self like nothing ever happened. Dean thinks about his own crashes, about how long it takes him to feel like himself again after a flashback or an extra-bad nightmare. _How do you just switch on like that?_

He shakes his head, annoyed. _Not the time. Leave it alone._

There’s a family making its way through the hall just ahead. The boy -- around eleven or twelve years old, probably -- is wearing hospital PJ’s and looks like he’s been crying, wiping his nose angrily on his sleeve and avoiding Dean’s eyes. His mom is distracted, her face pale and fragile-looking like she hasn’t had any sleep in too long, and doesn’t even remember that it’s an option. The dad isn’t looking much better, dark circles around his eyes and about a week’s worth of stubble. But any passing sympathy Dean might have had for him evaporates when the guy opens his mouth.

“Come on, Dylan, what’s with the crying? We told you it was fine. The doctor said it was fine. Just - - come on. You’re embarrassing yourself. Jesus!”

Sam slows down, frowns at the man who hasn’t noticed them yet, or doesn’t care. Okay, they’re in trouble. _Shit._

Dean grabs Sam’s elbow. “Hey, don’t. Don’t.”

Sam looks at him like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “He’s - - “

“Yeah, I know. Guy’s a tool. We gotta keep moving.”

Sam’s eyes narrow. “I just want to tell him to take it easy on the kid.”

Dean sighs. “I get it, man, but telling him to quit being an asshole’s not gonna work. You’ll just make him angry, and the kid is the one he’ll take it out on. You need to let this one go.”

He doesn't add _and we need to get you the hell out of here before you go under again_ , because he knows that won’t be a factor for Sam. Not in a situation like this. Never used to be a factor for him, either, before.

Sam is staring daggers at the man, but he seems to give up on confrontation. As they walk past the family Dean braces himself, ready to pull Sam away or possibly punch Douchebag Father of the Year, should it come to that; but Sam just catches the kid’s eye, smiles at him in a way that’s so pained and exposed that Dean can hear the words like they were spoken out loud. _I know, hang in there._

He swallows hard. Tries to ignore the resistance that still seems to come up in him at the suggestion or the mere indication that John was a bad father, that Sam remembers him as a bad father. That particular streak in his protectiveness has been wearing thin in recent years, as he finds himself thinking about their childhood and wondering about some of Dad’s choices. But still. The urge to defend him is there. The need to say _hey, he tried, he was clueless, he was a goner the minute Mom died._ The need to say _he loved us, so --_

He keeps quiet. Watches Sam’s back as they keep moving, _let’s just get out of here, don’t think._ He hopes against hope that Sam isn’t thinking, either; that the powder keg that is his brother’s mind these days will stay undisturbed just for now. That he'll manage not to think of their father until it's safe. Well, relatively safe.

It’s because his eyes are on Sam that he catches the way his steps begin to falter, right around the time they figure out the best route to the underground parking lot. _No no no no no._

“Sammy, you good?”

Sam nods automatically, doesn’t protest as Dean takes him by the shoulders and turns him around to look at his face. “You starting to space out on me again?”

“What - - um, no, no. ‘m okay.” Sam is trying hard to hide it, which means he’s still in the in-between stage. Not for long, though; his eyes are already too wide, his responses too slow. “I‘m good, Dean. ‘s not – we’re not - - “

“Sammy, hey, it’s okay. Look at me. We’re getting out of here, remember?”

Sam nods jerkily, his breathing getting labored. There it is, the distress rising to the surface. The pain he can’t handle. “Yeah, I know, it’s not - - I ca- can’t – ”

Dean watches as his brother trails off, as his face drains of its anguish all at once. Sam’s eyelids flutter, and just like that he’s switched off again, his gaze empty and his expression slack. His hands drop to his sides.

 _Shit. No._ _Not here_.

“Come on,” Dean hears himself say, and his arm is wrapped around Sam’s torso before he even makes the decision to hold him up, his brother swaying and leaning into the touch like he’s drunk. These episodes make Sam a drowning man, sinking fast and too exhausted to hold on. Dean bites down on the pain, tightens his grip. “Okay, alright.”

They need to get to the Impala, out of the hospital, away from this place that keeps tripping all of Sam’s wires for whatever reason. That’s all that matters. That’s all he’s allowed to think about.

Sam’s weight grows limp against him, and Dean raises his voice. “Sammy, hey, hey! Don’t do this. Stay awake, come on. Come **on**.” _I’m so tired. Please wake up._ “Look at me. Sam, look at me. Right here.”

Sam sighs, blinks slowly once, twice before his face goes lax again. Almost. Almost there. They’re haphazardly leaning against the wall now, and if Sam goes down there’s no way Dean will be able to get him back up again before someone calls for help. _Shit, come on._

“You can do this, you know you can. Sam, don’t go to sleep.”

Sam frowns. “Not - - ‘m not asleep,” he slurs. “You t- told, told me.”

“That’s right. So let’s keep you vertical, okay? We gotta get out of here. You keel over right now, they’re gonna roll you right back in there for some more tests. You want to get home, right? You can sleep all you want there.”

This is the first time he’s referred to Ellen’s place as _home_ , and the word feels foreign on his tongue after years of saying _back to the motel_ , or _back to the car_ on especially lean weeks.

The place they were staying in before everything started had sickly-green wallpaper and beds with spring traps for mattresses, and he does not miss the typical aroma of motels, either. But just because they’re grounded now, just because they’ve spent a couple months in one place, doesn’t mean it’s theirs. Thinking like that gets you in trouble.

He nudges Sam. “Okay, one foot in front of the other. You make it to the car and we’re golden. You with me? It’s maybe thirty feet, piece of cake.”

It’s more like two hundred feet with the way this place is built, but Sam doesn’t seem to be in the mood to contradict him. “M-hmmm,” he says, blinking hard and doing what Dean thinks might be his version of standing up straight at the moment. “L- let’s go.”

*

They’re about ten miles away from Ellen’s when Sam looks out the window and takes a sharp inhale, like he wasn’t expecting to find himself where he is. Dean keeps his eyes on the road.

“You back?”

Sam nods, clears his throat the way he always does when he’s embarrassed. “Yeah. Um. Sor-”

“Man, if you say ‘sorry’ one more time after one of your episodes, so help me, I’m gonna punch you in the face.”

Sam snorts. “That’d be kind of counterproductive.”

“I didn’t say ‘knock you out’, I said ‘punch you in the face’.”

Sam nods, distracted. He thinks for a while before saying, “how – I mean, how did the hospital know to call you? Did I tell them? I don’t remember telling them.”

“No, they found a note with emergency contact info in your coat. Ellen must have stuffed one in every pocket of every damn piece of clothing you own.” Dean tries to sound matter-of-fact. He never thought to do that, because he never thought Sam would find himself alone and in trouble when he’s got him. _You never learn._

“Oh.” Sam sinks in his seat, looking back out the window. _Ashamed again,_ Dean thinks. The thought makes his chest ache. He closes his fists harder around the steering wheel, keeps his eyes on the road.

They both stay silent for the rest of the drive.

 

***

 

**Hey, sorry this turned out so freakin' long. Next chapter: I'm thinking it's time we finally meet Jane. Assuming I don't lose it completely before I finish that part (still trying to manage a RL crisis that keeps getting worse).**

**I'm honestly too exhausted to even be able to tell if this chapter makes sense --  I apologize if it doesn't.  
**

**_____________**

**ETA, July14th: I know I've been even slower than usual with the updates. I haven't given up on this fic, and quite a bit of chapter 12 is done. I just need to find a place to live and survive the move, both of which turned out to be more challenging than I assumed. Disabled people are NOT welcome renters in my country. I'll get there though :)**


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